Long COVID tagged posts

COVID-19, the disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection, is associated with highly variable clinical outcomes that range from asymptomatic disease to death. For those with milder infections, COVID-19 can produce respiratory infection symptoms (cough, congestion, fever) and sensory phenotypes such as headache and loss of sense of smell.

In more severe cases, SARS-CoV-2 infection can affect nearly every organ and result in strokes from vascular occlusion, cardiovascular damage and acute renal failure. A substantial number of actively infected patients suffering from both mild and severe infections experience sensory-related symptoms, such as headache, visceral pain, Guillain-Barre syndrome, nerve pain and inflammation...

Even though the COVID-19 public health emergency classification will expire this spring, the lingering effects of the pandemic remain. A constant puzzle to solve since the first year of the pandemic has been “long COVID,” a condition in which those infected with the virus have symptoms that linger months or even years after they have cleared the initial infection.

“Long COVID is estimated to affect one out of every five people who get COVID,” says Brent Palmer, Ph.D., associate professor of allergy and clinical immunology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It’s described as persistent symptoms that last longer than four weeks post-initial infection. Those symptoms can include chest pain, cough, shortness of breath, brain fog, and fatigue.”

The virus that lingers
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Women who followed most aspects of a healthy lifestyle, including healthy body weight, not smoking, regular exercise, adequate sleep, high quality diet, and moderate alcohol consumption, had about half the risk of long COVID compared with women without any healthy lifestyle factors, according to a study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“With ongoing waves of COVID-19, long COVID has created a serious public health burden. Our findings raise the possibility that adopting more healthy behaviors may reduce the risk of developing long COVID,” said Andrea Roberts, senior research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and senior author of the study.

The study appears online February 6, 2023, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

It’s estimated that 8-23 million ...