Scientists Narrow Down What Could Be Causing Long COVID

Researchers are zeroing in on the causes, and the two leading theories are that the virus turns the immune system against the body, and despite recovering, the virus could be lingering in the body, not in the blood, but in the body's tissues. Yasmin Tayag, contributor to vox, joins us for what could be behind long covid. Thanks for joining us, Yasmin, thank you for having me. Let's talk about long covid. This is one of the most mysterious parts of the

coronavirus pandemic that scientists and people have had to deal with. So, you know, long COVID. Basically, some of these symptoms keep persisting with well long after they've recovered from actually having COVID nineteen sometimes months longer than that six months, I've heard a year in some cases, people are dealing with symptoms after their initial infection, and uh, it's been very perplexing for scientists. They're starting to zero in on certain

things that could be causing it. In two big theories surround the immune system obviously is going haywires still and lingering virus could also be causing problems and people and making these problems persist. So yasmin, what are scientists looking at and what are they starting to realize what's going

on with this? Yeah, Well, one of the big challenges with long COVID research is that there are so many symptoms to account for, and scientists have had to figure out what is the root biological cause behind all of them. And one of the things that's been helpful is understanding that there is no one long COVID. There's probably many different subtypes of this condition that we're calling on COVID, and so with that in mind, they're teasing out the

different drivers. So, as you mentioned, one of the big ones is the immune system, and this was suspected long ago um at the beginning of long COVID research. They think that because of the initial infection, the immune system and some people is just going haywire. Either it's reacting to strongly or more likely it's reacting against the self.

So the body's own immune system starts attacking its own self, and that is what's behind some of the symptoms we're seeing, such as brain fog or blood clots that are being seen throughout the blood. UM. So that's one potential UH driver, and the other one, as you mentioned, the other big suspect is the possible persistence of virus and the system. So this is simply that the virus doesn't entirely get eliminated after your initial infect infection and it's just hanging

out in the body. And one of the difficult things UH about studying this is that scientists are finding that the virus when it does linger, it's not really in the blood. It tends to hang out inside the tissues, and so you're not going to catch this with a simple blood test. UH. They're now developing diagnostics to find these markers that you know, would otherwise go unnoticed. UM. But lingering virus is they're not really sure what it's doing.

It might not be doing anything, but it all might also be injuring tissues directly or leaking virus proteins into the blood stream which go on to activate the immune system, or they might be triggering the information in the brain by traveling up the vegas r of So scientists are trying to tease out all these different different drivers, and what complicates the matter is they're probably all interconnected. Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say. I mean, they're

kind of related. Right. If the virus is lingering and the immune system is constantly picking up signs of it and you know, throwing anybodies at it, throwing stuff attitude, at least address what it's sensing, you know, it's gonna it's gonna keep the immune system in that constant state of flux um. Tiny blood clots are also in this you know, that kind of fuels that immune system reaction to. That's another one that they think could make the things persist. Yeah.

The blood clots are super interesting. So they're seen in patients with both acute COVID and in patients with long COVID and UM. What scientists in South Africa are finding is that inside these clots, like these clots are really resistant to breaking down, and normally the body is able

to do that. But the scientists ask why aren't these clots getting digested, and it's because inside them, hidden inside are these inflammatory molecules that are sort of preventing this digestion and they may also be triggering the immune system to react. So, you know, by blowing up these blood clots to see what's inside, scientists are getting a better idea of what what is causing them to stick around.

And so these are the kind of the two leading theories right it's the immune system and the lingering virus. But they've kind of also identified, I guess, for other criteria that that people might have that could make them uh suffer from long COVID. And it's kind of some of the stuff that we've heard about before, some of the comorbidities and all that. But basically, if if you had high levels of the virus in your blood when

you were infected, that can lead to long COVID. You have type two diabetes, unfortunately, that could lead to it. Epstein bar virus, which I guess of the population has it lays dormant in the body. If that gets reactivated, that can make it happen. And then these auto antibodies, which kind of talk about things that are just attacking your own cells. So these other four factors could contribute

to that as well. Yeah, the recent research and if this is really early research, so it's not really a diagnostic yet, but they think these factors might put certain people at higher risk from long COVID and they will, you know, possibly be a thing to look out for as scientists try to predict who's most at risk when

they're in the early stages of an infection. The good thing about this, though, is that while they're doing this research, while they're looking to see what the root causes are, a lot of the scientists and researchers are focusing a lot on the treatment of the symptoms, and you know, they feel at least pretty good that they'll have something that will kind of address some of it, at least

to make the symptoms not as as worse. Yeah, you know, there's a one scientist here in New York, David Petrino, who his background is in rehab therapy, and he's finding that some rehab techniques can help people with a lot of the symptoms of lung covide a. Lot of the common ones are like breathing issues or you know, because the body isn't you know, at it working at its best, you know, problems with physical movement. And there's you know, a very slow and patient coaching that can help them

recover their breathing, recover their movements. Um, and that's that's proving to be quite promising, but it doesn't cover all the symptoms. And so you know, as I talked about before, there are different subsets of the condition that you know will probably require different types of treatment. You know. On the other hand, there are also scientists working on you know, looking at different drugs that might be able to to deal with the symptoms or to deal with the blood clots,

and these are all in development. But two to really get them, you know, get these treatments out into the world and helping patients, we all need to have clinical trials, which are expensive, and I think hunting is a problem with a lot of long COVID research. Yeah, I mean, just to kind of illustrate how difficult this is and the range of symptoms, right, So the symptoms that people report that have long COVID, there's more than two hundred

across ten groups of different organ systems. So that's just a lot of variables really, but I wanted to ask about because it was interesting. Also, they noticed that in people that had long COVID, it kind of didn't matter if you were severely infected. People that had milder symptoms still could come down with it, right, It could come back at you months later. And you know, the kind of figures into the conversation that we're having with the O Macron variant, where we are seeing a lot more

milder cases, but they still don't know. It's just too early to tell if even the O Macron variant cans for some of this long COVID. Yeah, they're really not sure yet. You know, I think there it is seeming more likely that if you have really severe disease that you'll be more likely to u end up with long COVID. But again, as you said, people who have been asymptomatic or had really mild cases also end up with long COVID, So they don't know. And with O Macron, you know,

it's too early to tell. O Macron has only been around for two months, so nobody's really reporting quote unquote long COVID symptoms yet, which happened after three months. Um, but what all of the research I suppoke to told me is that regardless of whether O macron causes you know, a lower rate of long COVID, and the fact that there's so many people with O macron, you know, means that even a small proportion of those people will still

be a big number. It's kind of that unfortunate lottery, right, there's just so many numbers that are happening, you know, it could unfortunately befall you. So just interesting. Look, as I mentioned, this has kind of been one of the biggest mysteries since the start of the pandemic, these ongoing lingering symptoms. They're starting to nail it down, but still a long way to go before we figured out exactly what's happening. Yasmin Tayag, contributor to Vox, Thank you very

much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oxpard Ramirez and this has been reopening America. You don't forget the effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.