Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Boga bam here by now we know the various symptoms, the fever, shortness of breath, the nausea and a nasmia, the signature dry cough. Since the COVID nineteen pandemic began, more than two d and thirty four million people have become intimately familiar with some combination of these telltale signs as they grappled with the novel coronavirus.
For many, recovery began two or three weeks later. For some COVID nineteen patients, though the symptoms have never gone away. Months after their first positive test, COVID long haulers still experienced splitting headaches, nerve and joint pain, fatigue, cognitive sluggishness also known as brain fog, and occasionally distortion of smell and taste. This experience has been dubbed long COVID, and it's an ongoing fight against symptoms from a virus that
was supposed to have run its course. It's become prevalent enough that the National Institutes of Health or NIH, announced a one point one five billion dollar four year initiative to study the disease in December. So today, let's take a deeper look at what we know about long COVID and how doctors might go about treating it. We know that symptoms of long COVID set in after an initial infection with the coronavirus. However, scientists haven't fully uncovered why
these symptoms persist in some people but not others. That said, there are a few hypotheses. The first is that the virus simply never leaves the body, known as viral persistence. Certain viruses can take up residents in their host's body. Once the acute infection cycle is finished. These renegade viruses hide out in tissues where they may act like guerilla fighters, causing chronic, low to mid level symptoms punctu ated by
periods of dormancy. For example, the chickenpox virus normally infects kids at a relatively young age, causing mild, if incredibly annoying symptoms. However, the virus can stay in the infected individual's body well into adulthood, re emerging as a nasty
case of shingles. A research published in the journal Nature in September also suggests that the ebolavirus may remain in the systems of those who survive their initial infection, leading to chronic issues like muscle fatigue and an increased risk of miscarriage. Another hypothesis is that in certain cases, COVID
nineteen can lead to organ or tissue damage. Inflammation is one of your body's natural immune responses to viruses like coronavirus, but that natural response can go haywire for some patients. COVID nineteen infection can trigger a severe, cascading inflammatory response in multiple organ systems, including the lungs, brain, and blood vessels, lead in to what's known as a cytokine storm. This can result in scar tissue build up in the lungs,
long term heart complications, or even an elevated risk of stroke. Finally, it could be the case that long COVID is triggered by other opportunistic viruses. In fact, a June study in the journal Pathogens found that COVID nineteen patients are more susceptible to infection by a reawakened epstein bar virus, the same pathogen that causes mononucleosis. For the article of this
episode is based on how stuff Work. Spoke with Michael van Elzacker PhD, a neuroscience researcher at Harvard Medical School. He explained, when there's an acute infection, other viruses can often take advantage of that and sort of start to do their own thing. These hypotheses and others are being investigated by various research groups, including Van Elzecker's. However, he cautions that long COVID is likely not a one size
fits all diagnosis. He said, we have to be a little bit careful that we don't consider this some unique, standalone problem. It's probably not going to be the same thing for every single person. Due to the relatively recent emergence of the novel coronavirus, it's difficult to say with certainty who is at most risk for long COVID, but thanks to the efforts of scientists and statisticians across the globe,
a much clearer picture is beginning to emerge. In a study published in September of twenty twenty one in the journal Plos Medicine, researchers found that about thirty six percent of patients studied were still experiencing COVID like symptoms three and six months after they initially tested positive for the virus.
Most previous studies have estimated lingering COVID nineteen symptoms in between ten and thirty percent of patients, including in April one UK study of more than twenty thousand patients, which found that thirteen point seven percent of participants were still
experiencing symptoms at least twelve weeks after diagnosis. The new study, which was led by scientists at the University of Oxford, searched anonymized data for millions of electronic health records to identify a study group of more than two hundred and seventy three thousand patients with COVID nineteen. Survivor bias might
also skew the age numbers for long COVID. A separate September one study by the UK Office of National Statistics found that people between the ages of fifty and sixty nine were most likely to report long term symptoms, especially if they had other pre existing health conditions, but as other research has pointed out, this might be because older folks are more likely to die from the disease. So far, it seems that vaccination cuts the risk of developing long
COVID roughly in half. Unfortunately, treatment options for long COVID are fairly limited. At the moment. Because the source of long COVID is much trickier to pin down than an acute COVID nineteen infection, it puts doctors and patients alike in a difficult bind, and without a standard treatment protocol in place, medical providers often feel helpless to recommend a
course of action while their patients continue to suffer. The other issue is that chronic conditions are often complex and resource intensive to treat, and they come with a certain amount of stigma. Study published in Pain Medicine found that eighty eight percent of patients who had chronic pain reported being disbelieved by their primary care provider about their experience.
But some hospitals, such as U C. L A Health, are beginning to offer long COVID treatment plans accustomized for each individual patient, and some of these plans include input from psychologists and other mental health professionals in addition to neurologists, cardiologists, and infectious disease experts. Health care providers hope that these more robust mental health resources will help long COVID patients not only manage their cognitive symptoms, but also the emotional
distress and fatigue that accomp niece chronic illness. Today's episode is based on the article one in three who had COVID nineteen have long COVID symptoms, says Oxford study on how stuff works dot Com written by Joanna Thompson. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clain. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.