published
StudyAlong the fascinating long path to covid, researchers are making progress
Four years after the start of the epidemic, researchers continue to make progress in the “puzzle” of this post-infectious syndrome with the hope of better treating patients.
Millions of people around the world are believed to be suffering from chronic Covid (pictorial image).
Pixabay
Long covid is the name given to a variety of symptoms that usually appear within three months after infection and persist for at least two months after infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the most common of which are fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle aches , brain fog. Although it is difficult to estimate the number of people affected by this phenomenon, it would represent 10 to 20% of people who develop the disease. covidAccording to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Many teams are still working on this phenomenon and some recent works mark the progress. A study published in the journal “Science” in January showed significant differences in blood proteins in more than 110 patients with Covid, including 40 patients with symptoms six months after initial infection. Onur Boymann, a Swiss researcher and lead author of the study, said it was a “central piece of the puzzle” to explain why Covid stays in some people’s bodies for so long.
“All aspects” of life.
Part of the body’s immune system — the complement system, which normally fights infection by killing infected cells — apparently remains active, continuing to attack healthy targets and damage tissue, these researchers say. The team found that when people recovered chronic covid, According to Onur Boyman, this supplement system was also improving. “This shows that prolonged covid is a disease and it is possible to measure it,” he added, raising hopes of identifying specific markers.
Another recent study, published in “Nature,” found abnormalities in muscle tissue and dysfunction of mitochondria — the cell’s energy sources — that may explain some people’s great fatigue. Climbing the stairs to her apartment became an ordeal, says Lucia, who has suffered from Covid for a long time and who never imagined how Covid would “affect all aspects of (her) life, even social and financial and how”. Distrust or rejection” from the medical community or social circles” sometimes adds to health problems. The importance of support for patients is underlined by a study published this week in the “British Medical Journal”, according to which group rehabilitation improves the quality of life of patients suffering from post-Covid syndrome.
Elusive Cause “Multisystemic”
The protection of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 against the long-term risk of covid in adults and children has been confirmed by several recent studies. But, for the moment, the long Covid still remains elusive because it is “multisystemic”, while “our brain is trained to think of diseases according to organ systems,” Ziad al-Ali, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told AFP. .
The causes may also be associated, or succeed each other in the same person, or vary from person to person.
According to Ziad Al-Ali, understanding the mechanisms of prolonged covid may also help to understand “why and how acute infections cause chronic diseases”. This can thus strengthen the fight against other conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome. Especially since “in the context of climate change”, “there is a risk of an increasing emergence of infectious pathologies, a large number of which will give rise to post-infectious syndromes”, warned Brigitte Autrein, President of Cowars, in November. , an advisory body that sent the French government an opinion on prolonged covid.
