8/2/2023 0 Comments Yasmine vox![]() But David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, is erring on the side of caution. Scientists I spoke to agreed that it’s too early to know whether omicron will lead to a new wave of long Covid because less than three months have passed since the variant emerged. ![]() It’s too early to predict an omicron wave of long Covid, but scientists are cautious ![]() “We are really working day and night,” Resia Pretorius, a professor of physiological sciences at Stellenbosch University in South Africa whose research is explaining the role of blood clots in long Covid, told me. Early research is pointing to factors that may raise a person’s risk of long Covid, such as low levels of certain antibodies, reactivated viruses in the bloodstream, and existing conditions such as diabetes or asthma.Īmid pressure from patients and concerns that the vast numbers of omicron infections might drive a new wave of long Covid, researchers around the world are racing to understand what causes the condition and how it might be diagnosed and treated. While many used to think that the condition only affected people with severe illness, patients now range from teens to older adults, some of whom had only mild or even asymptomatic illness, said Kathleen Bell, a professor in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at UT Southwestern Medical Center, on a recent press call. Scientists also have a better understanding of the people who are susceptible to long Covid. There are no firm answers yet, but there’s now greater consensus among researchers about the two leading theories and the ways they may be connected. Early suspects included a weakened immune system, widespread inflammation, and even low sex hormone levels. Scientists have proposed numerous hypotheses to explain long Covid’s myriad symptoms since research began in earnest after the first wave of cases in 2020. ![]() Studies on the conservative end have found that 10 to 20 percent of Covid-19 survivors get long Covid, while others report 50 percent. Estimates so far are “wildly disparate” in part because researchers define the condition differently and because the people seeking care may only be a small portion of those affected, said Nahid Bhadelia, an associate professor at Boston University School of Medicine. No one knows exactly how many people have or had long Covid. How to spot the signs of long Covid - and what to do next This means that if you’ve recovered from Covid-19, you’re not necessarily in the clear. Occasionally, they appear months after recovery or after an asymptomatic case. Sometimes, the symptoms just never go away after the initial infection. According to the World Health Organization’s working definition, long Covid usually occurs three months after symptomatic Covid-19 begins and lasts for at least two months. Long Covid is a condition that arises after acute infection and often includes shortness of breath, fatigue, and “brain fog” but can also involve a wide range of debilitating problems in the heart, brain, lungs, gut, and other organs. ![]() A big question, however, looms over the survivors: What about long Covid? Thanks to vaccines, boosters, and increasingly available treatments, most people who get infected today won’t end up in the hospital or die. More than 28 million new cases have been reported since Omicron emerged in the US just two months ago, and the variant now drives 99.9 percent of cases, as of January 22, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even as the number of new Covid-19 cases in the US is dropping, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still testing positive every day. ![]()
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