Long COVID tagged posts

Fatigue is the symptom that most significantly impacts the daily lives of long COVID patients, and can affect quality of life more than some cancers, finds a new study led by researchers at UCL and the University of Exeter.

The research, published in BMJ Open , examines the impact of long COVID on the lives of over 3,750 patients who were referred to a long COVID clinic and used a digital app as part of their NHS treatment for the condition.

Patients were asked to complete questionnaires on the app about how long COVID was affecting them—considering the impact of long COVID on their day-to-day activities, levels of fatigue, depression, anxiety, breathlessness, brain fog, and their quality of life.

The researchers found that many long COVID p...

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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