A group of scientists have offered clues about the contributing factors to “long COVID,” a range of symptoms that could afflict a person weeks or months after recovering from COVID-19.
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Dozens of researchers reported in a study published in the scientific journal Cell that contributing factors to long-term COVID-19 effects could be detected as early as initial diagnosis. The early factors linked to long COVID include type 2 diabetes; a measure of the virus in the blood, also known as the “viral load”; evidence of the Epstein-Barr virus in the body, which causes mononucleosis; and the presence of autoantibodies, which are produced by the immune system and directed against the person’s own body. The presence of these antibodies is the cause of many autoimmune diseases, such as lupus.
“Our analyses provided a framework to understand the heterogeneity of ‘long COVID’ and a rich resource for interrogating the biological factors that contribute to [post-acute COVID-19 effects], which can potentially be utilized to monitor and guide interventional trials to treat and prevent post-acute COVID-19 symptoms,” the researchers wrote.
Long COVID has been a catch-all term for symptoms that can stick around for months after recovery. People have reported feeling fatigue, troubling cognitive symptoms such as memory loss or confusion, and gastrointestinal problems, among other symptoms. There has been some skepticism among doctors about the existence of such a disorder because the long-lasting suite of symptoms often cannot be explained in clinical tests. For instance, patient advocate Chimere Smith, who suffers from long COVID, told a panel at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health that her brain fog was blamed by doctors on drug use and her symptoms were repeatedly dismissed.
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The researchers surveyed 309 COVID-19 patients for two to three months, a limiting factor because they could not track symptoms lingering for longer. They also pointed to the value of antiviral medications such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid, as they reduce viral load in the body, as well as cortisol-replacing therapies in people with deficient levels of cortisol produced by the two adrenal glands, “which is a treatable condition that can cause symptoms reminiscent of many [long-COVID].”
While antiviral medications, including Paxlovid and Merck’s course of treatment molnupiravir, have been billed as game-changers in COVID-19 therapy, the pills are hard to come by. The slow rollout has led infectious disease experts to argue that the Biden administration should have placed massive advance orders of the drugs before authorization from federal regulators, just as the Trump administration did with vaccines.
