The intense scientific effort that has long plagued COVID has produced more than 24,000 scientific publications, making it the most researched health condition in any of the four decades of recorded human history. .
Long COVID is a term that describes the constellation of long-term health effects caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus infection. These range from persistent respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, to debilitating fatigue or brain fog that impairs people’s ability to function, and conditions such as heart failure and diabetes, which are known to last a lifetime.
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I’m a physician scientist, and I’ve been deeply immersed in the long-term study of COVID since the early days of the pandemic. I have testified before the US Senate as an expert witness on the long-term COVID, published extensively on it and was named one of the 100 most influential people in life in 2024 for of my research in this area.
During the first half of 2024, many reports and scientific papers on long-term COVID clarified this complex situation. These include, in particular, information on how COVID-19 can still wreak havoc on multiple organs after initial viral infection, as well as emerging evidence on viral persistence and normal functioning of the body takes months or years after the initial infection.
At the beginning of this epidemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared to cause damage to the lungs. But researchers soon realized that it affected many organs. Photo by Benoit Tessier via Reuters.
How long does COVID affect the body?
A new study that my colleagues and I published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 17, 2024, shows that the long-term risk of COVID has decreased during this epidemic. In 2020, when the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2 was dominant and vaccines were not available, about 10.4 percent of adults who contracted COVID-19 were and prolonged COVID-19. By early 2022, when omicron strains were strong, that rate had dropped to 7.7 percent among unvaccinated adults and 3.5 percent of vaccinated adults. In other words, unvaccinated people were more than twice as likely to have prolonged COVID.
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While researchers like myself still don’t have concrete numbers for the current rate in mid-2024 because of the time it takes for long-term COVID cases to show up in the data, the flow of patients young people in long-term COVID clinics are still equal to 2022. .
We found that the decline is due to two important drivers: the availability of vaccines and changes in the characteristics of the virus – which has made the virus less infectious and can reduce its ability to infect. persist in the human body for a long time. causing chronic disease.
Although there is a reduction in the risk of having prolonged COVID, even a 3.5 percent risk is significant. New and repeated infections of COVID-19 translate into millions of chronic COVID cases increasing the already staggering number of people suffering from the condition.
Estimates from the first year of the epidemic suggest that at least 65 million people worldwide had long-term exposure to COVID. Together with a team of other leading scientists, my team will soon publish updated estimates of the global burden of COVID-19 and its impact on the global economy through 2023.
In addition, a new report by the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine details all the long-term health effects of COVID. The report was commissioned by the Social Security Administration to understand the effects of prolonged COVID on its disability benefits.
It concludes that chronic COVID is a complex chronic condition that can cause more than 200 effects on multiple body systems. These include new onset or worsening of:
Chronic COVID can affect people across the lifespan from children to adults and across race and ethnicity and health conditions. Importantly, more than 90 percent of people with chronic COVID-19 had mild COVID-19 infection.
The National Academies report also concluded that long-term COVID can result in not being able to return to work or school; poor quality of life; decreased ability to perform daily activities; and decreased physical and mental function for months or years after the initial infection.
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The report points out that many of the long-term health effects of COVID-19, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic fatigue, cognitive impairment and impaired self-efficacy, have not yet been addressed. On the Social Security Administration Barriers list, however, they can significantly affect a person’s ability to participate. at work or school.
Many people experience long-term symptoms of COVID for years after the initial infection.
Long road ahead
In addition, health problems caused by COVID-19 can last for years after the initial infection.
A large study published in early 2024 showed that even people who had a mild infection with SARS-CoV-2 still developed new health problems related to COVID-19 in the third year after initial infection.
Such findings are consistent with other studies showing that the virus remains in various organ systems for months or years after infection with COVID-19. And research shows that the body’s responses to an infection are still visible two to three years after a mild infection. Together, these studies may explain why SARS-CoV-2 infection years ago can still cause new health problems long after the initial infection.
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Important progress is also being made in understanding the ways in which COVID causes long-term damage to the body. Two preliminary studies from the US and the Netherlands show that when researchers transfer auto-antibodies – antibodies produced by a person’s own immune system to their own tissues and organs – from from humans with long-term COVID to healthy mice, the animals begin to have longer. COVID-like symptoms such as muscle weakness and poor balance.
These studies suggest that an abnormal immune response that is thought to be responsible for the production of auto-antibodies may underlie COVID long-term and that clearing the auto-antibodies may hold potential therapeutic promise.
A constant threat
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the widespread dangers of COVID-19, many messages suggest that it is no longer a threat to society. Although there is no empirical evidence to support this claim, this misinformation has entered the public record.
The data, however, tells a different story.
COVID-19 infections continue to outnumber flu cases and lead to more hospitalizations and deaths than the flu. COVID-19 also leads to serious long-term health problems. Downplaying COVID-19 like a useless cold or equating it to the flu is not true.
This article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the first article.
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