July 3, 2022.
It's got a lot more difficult.
There are many questions with cases rising in the U.S. and globally yet again.
What time does immunity last?
I don't know how many times I'll get carbon dioxide.
What are the chances that I will get long cleft someday?
It is difficult to say who is at risk for a condition that is not well defined. Researchers and practitioners have theories about the root causes of COVID and have educated guesses about who might be most at risk.
It's possible that Long COVID is the great mystery of our time.
According to Dr. Alba Miranda Azola, co-director of the Post-Acute COVID-19 Team Program, it's a big umbrella term.
She says that the condition could affect up to 23 million Americans. Patients define themselves as having long COVID and the term is very inclusive.
According to a landmark study published last summer in British medical journal, almost anything and everything could be a symptom of the condition.
Scientists have tried to categorize long COVID patients into different groups, Hypothesizing that the disease isn't one thing, but many. An infectious disease specialist at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. tells Fortune she divides long COVID into five categories.
According to Dr. Brodin, long COVID patients can be categorized into three categories: autoimmune disease triggered by COVID, metabolic disease triggered by COVID, and long-term.
Azola shows how difficult it is for even the best medical minds to wrap their heads around the new disorder.
Brodin wishes he knew the full answer to the question of how long Covid is.
There is one thing that is certain, and that is that long carbon dioxide is not a single thing.
I think it's clear as mud. The experts aren't sure who is more likely to develop long COVID.
Some well-informed theories about who is most at risk are available.
The odds are not in your favor if you have had a repeat COVID infections. Azola says that a preprint of a study was published earlier this month on ResearchSquare.
A recent study shows that people who have a high viral load are more likely to develop long COVID. Azola says Paxlovid could eventually reduce long COVID in this population by squashing their viral loads.
There are people who have the Epstein-Barr virus.
One of the most commonviruses in humans is the Epstein-Barr virus. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a lot of people don't know they've been exposed to the disease. According to some researchers, chronic fatigue syndrome can be caused by the virus and can include headaches, concentration problems, and fatigue. Some long COVID patients were more likely to have reactivated EBV.
The study found that people with auto-antibodies circulating were more likely to die. Researchers wrote that only a small percentage of long COVID patients had been diagnosed with an auto-immune condition. Azola says that they don't know why or how they have more antibodies in their blood.
There were people who had neurological symptoms. An assistant professor at the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine who treats long-COVID patients has found that some of them have brains that misinterpret subclinical inflammation. The damage to their brain signals encourages them to seek more sleep and oxygen. In his experience, long COVID patients who fit into this bucket often experienced neurological symptoms, like loss of taste or smell.
There is conflicting data about the effectiveness of vaccine. Azola says that the overarching message is that vaccines decrease the risk of long COVID.
Most long COVID risk factors are out of our control and we don't know if they affect us. Azola says that there are things in our control.
Azola says that people should consider their risk of coming down with severe COVID, as well as their risk of developing long COVID.
She says that long carbon dioxide can happen to anyone. It can be disabled. It is unfair to say that COVID is over or that we need to remove our masks. We need to be on top of things.
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