Long COVID symptoms

A new study published today in the peer-reviewed journal Current Medical Research and Opinion, reveals that females are "significantly" more likely to ...

The latter serves as a rallying cry: availability of sex disaggregated data and intentional analysis is imperative if we are to ensure that disparate outcomes in disease course are addressed. Further, "there may be disparities in access to care based on gender that could affect the natural history of the disease, leading to more complications and sequela." (2022) Sex differences in sequelae from COVID-19 infection and in long COVID syndrome: a review. The authors note that this synthesis of the available literature is among the few to break down the specific health conditions that occur as a result of COVID-related illness by sex. "Therefore, differences in outcomes between females and males infected with SARS-CoV-2 could have been anticipated. When looking at the early onset of COVID-19, findings show that female patients were far more likely to experience mood disorders such as depression, ear, nose, and throat symptoms, musculoskeletal pain, and respiratory symptoms.

Enormous databases do not necessarily allow scientists to solve long COVID mysteries, such as how well vaccination protects against the condition.

Some studies rely on self-reporting, such as the COVID Symptom Study app developed by King’s College London and the data-science company ZOE, also in London. Data from the app showed that vaccination reduced people’s risk of experiencing long COVID 28 days or more after an acute infection by about half 4. This finding is in line with the results of an 18 June paper 5 based on ZOE data. “The common thread here is that vaccines are better than no vaccines.” This could lead to differences in whether and how long COVID is reported. “The number of data points considered is often so large that we mistakenly assume that these data must be representative,” she says. Although 90% of those people were men, that still left 1.3 million women in the analysis, Al-Aly notes, more than many other studies can muster. The syndrome can last for months or years, and has a distressing tendency to reappear, sometimes months after an apparent recovery. “But this isn’t necessarily the case.” says Al-Aly. Having so much uncertainty doesn’t engender a lot of trust, Al-Aly adds: “The public does not react very well to saying ‘between 15% and 50%’.” It is the kind of whiplash result that people following long-COVID research have become accustomed to seeing, as data from various studies report discordant results. The team found that previous vaccination only reduces the risk of developing long COVID after infection by about 15%, which is substantially less than some other estimates 4, which suggested that vaccines halved the risk. Al-Aly’s study of long COVID after a ‘breakthrough’ infection — one that follows vaccination — included records from more than 13 million people.

Dr. Lekshmi Santhosh parses what research has illuminated about long Covid, and what questions remain.

Her clinic opened in May 2020 and was one of the first to focus on treating long Covid patients specifically. Dr. Lekshmi Santhosh is an assistant professor at UCSF Medical Center, and the founder and medical director of UCSF’s long Covid and post-ICU clinic. This is what we call long Covid. It’s one term for a vast range of experiences, symptoms, outcomes.

Gabriel Sanchez, Keon Gilbert, and Camille Busette, discuss why long COVID-19 will exacerbate existing racial and ethnic health inequalities in the United ...

In this post we identify the gaping racial inequalities not only associated with long COVID-19 cases, but in the resources needed to properly manage a lingering case. Second, people with long COVID-19 will need adequate health coverage to manage both the financial and health components of care management. The challenges with sleeping are likely to be exasperated by a host of underlying forces that impact sleep, including sub-par housing conditions. Because long COVID-19 can be experienced by youth and young adults, there is additional guidance on how primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools should evaluate, assess, and make academic adjustments for those in school and higher education settings. Given the correlation between lack of quality sleep and a wide range of other health conditions, this may generate even greater racial inequalities in health outcomes down the line. The long-term effects of COVID-19 have not been realized. Unfortunately, racial inequalities in access to health insurance are vast, particularly for Latinos. This is a direct consequence of the several jobs held by people of color lacking sufficient healthcare benefits. The glaring racial inequalities in COVID-19 outcomes have been well documented by Brookings and a wide range of other scholars and think tanks. It is important to note that long COVID-19, particularly in vulnerable groups, may be complicated by other long‐term conditions, notably diabetes, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, and chronic mental health conditions. The African American Research Collaborative/Commonwealth Fund American COVID-19 Vaccine Poll is an extensive, diverse national survey with measures of access to primary care physician. This blog post summarizes a few considerations about the racial differences among COVID-19 patients with longer-term symptoms and identifies policy solutions to help address these challenges. The persistence of these symptoms and their ability to limit major life activities creates new considerations for immediate and long-term policy solutions.

Females mount more rapid and robust innate and adaptive immune responses, which can protect them from initial infection and severity. However, this same ...

The paper did note that women in certain professions, such as nursing and education, may be at greater risk of catching the virus. However, this same difference can render females more vulnerable to prolonged autoimmune-related diseases," the authors explained. "Differences in immune system function between females and males could be an important driver of sex differences in Long Covid syndrome.

It's a highly concerning aspect of the pandemic and Dr. Sunjya Schweig, MD expert in chronic illnesses and Founder at California Center for Functional Medicine ...

That said, some basics steps that are beneficial to most people with long Covid include: The denial of long Covid simply because a positive covid test isn't provided can lead to increased stigmatization and denial of a truly debilitating chronic illness. Castallian reveals, "Long covid can affect every body system and every organ in the body, resulting in over 200 different symptoms ranging from brain fog to severe fatigue to heart rate management issues to organ failure. Castallian explains, "Remember that a negative covid test, or a lack of a covid test does not exclude long Covid. There are high rates of false negatives with antigen tests and many people who had acute covid in the first wave of infections did not have access to any tests. Long COVID falls under the ADA as a disability – it has the potential to completely alter and derail someone's life and health." People should be aware that this is a new chronic illness and the science surrounding issues of causes, how many people have it, and treatment/management are constantly evolving.

Women are significantly more likely than men to experience long COVID, with symptoms that follow a distinct clinical pattern, researchers reported today.

In contrast, male patients were significantly more likely to experience endocrinological disorders such as diabetes and kidney disease. Males were significantly more likely to experience renal problems. The total sample size included 1.3 million people, but the team pointed out that only 35 of 640,634 articles provided data by sex and enough details about clinical symptoms and outcome to make a gender comparison.

In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, researchers examined 42000 participants from nine longitudinal studies conducted in the United ...

The study discerned symptoms characteristic of acute COVID-19 and long COVID. However, the study results did not support the notion that long COVID might be a conglomerate of multiple syndromes discernible by differences in symptom patterns. The authors compared the symptoms in COVID-19 in the last 12 weeks and no COVID-19 groups to find that their symptoms characterized acute COVID-19 and ongoing symptomatic COVID-19. These symptoms were fever, muscle pain, loss of taste and smell, dry cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, and breathing difficulty. Heatmap of symptom probability differences comparing the two COVID-19 groups with the no COVID-19 group across all studies. It was likely due to differential reporting of similar symptoms between males and females or females having a higher symptom burden. Using the symptom clustering analyses, the authors found a maximum of two symptom patterns among any of the COVID-19 groups. In fact, a lack of appropriate controls often hinders evaluating symptoms specific to acute COVID-19 and long COVID. Furthermore, symptoms identified by comparing the COVID-19 > last 12 weeks and no COVID-19 groups resembled the characteristic symptoms of long COVID. Consistent with existing literature, these symptoms were shortness of breath, impaired cognition, chest pain, and fatigue. Across all three study groups, the prevalence of runny nose and sneezing did not seem to vary, indicating these symptoms were not COVID-19-specific. Furthermore, they used random-effects meta-analysis to combine prevalences of symptoms within the core symptom set across studies. The study approach minimized the heterogeneity of datasets of all the included studies and their designs besides maximizing comparability. The team considered the 'no COVID-19' category as the reference group and the 'COVID-19 in last 12 weeks' category as the baseline group. The third study group was 'COVID-19 > last 12 weeks.' The researchers used a questionnaire to gather information regarding COVID-19 and its symptoms in all the study participants.

Four weeks after testing positive for COVID-19 and feeling symptoms, women encountered recurring symptoms more often than men, according to a study ...

Men were more likely to experience acute kidney injury. The article's authors wrote that "the size of female cohorts and sex-disaggregated data analysis and reporting are insufficient in medical research" and said further studies tracking long COVID-19 should report differences among sexes. Women also were more likely to have dermatological, gastrointestinal and neurological long COVID-19 symptoms.