[ad_1]
It has been approximately nine months since the world discovered what we now call the coronavirus, formally SARS-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease.
Although there has been a lot of research, there is still much that is unknown.
- We don’t know where the virus comes from
- We don’t know why some people get very sick and others don’t have any symptoms.
- We don’t know if he really becomes permanently immune after illness.
- We don’t even have a proper overview of the symptoms, because it varies so much
And what is now becoming increasingly focused is also a mystery: What kind of long-term damage can the virus cause?
It is not really a respiratory virus
One of the challenges is that although the virus is literally called “severe acute respiratory syndrome” (SARS), it is not actually considered a common respiratory virus.
– Covid-19 often attacks the lungs first, but it is not just a respiratory disease, and in many people the lungs are not the most affected organ. This is partly because many different cells in different parts of the body have ACE2 receptors that are the target of the virus, but also because an infection can damage the immune system found throughout the body, writes Nature in a review of the possible long-term effects of the coronavirus.
Researchers believe, for example, that the loss of sense of smell and taste that many patients report is due to signals that are blocked in the brain. However, the virus does not directly attack brain cells.
Many different long-term effects were reported
The fact that the virus can attack many different organs means that the range of possible long-term effects is wide.
According to Nature, there are now research teams around the world doing long-term studies.
The challenge is so natural that, by definition, getting answers to long-term effects takes time. At the moment, one must rely heavily on the experiences of other viral infections, which it is not known whether they will also apply to COVID-19, as well as the experiences of patients who were infected earlier this winter. This again creates uncertainty because then I knew much less about how to handle the most serious cases.
Lung injuries are the most obvious
The most commonly discussed long-term effect is, naturally, sufficient lung damage, which reduces the lungs’ ability to do the job of carrying oxygen into the blood and CO2 out of the blood. According to Nature, there are currently few peer-reviewed research studies in the field.
According to a team of researchers at the University of Southern California, who have reviewed the CT images of 919 patients from several different studies, they have found that the lower lobes of the lungs are the ones that normally suffer the most attacks.
– The CT images were full of dark areas that indicated inflammation, which can make it difficult to breathe during exercise. Visible damage usually reduced after two weeks. An Austrian study found that injuries decreased over time: 88 percent of study participants had visible injuries 6 weeks after they were not written to in the hospital, but after 12 weeks, this number dropped to 56 percent, writes Nature.
The researchers plan new images after 24 weeks, but these results are unclear.
According to Nature, the experience of the original SARS virus shows that the damage can last for a long time. A study from China showed that 15 years after 38 percent of hospitalized SARS patients had reduced lung function and the next 5 percent clear lung damage 15 years later.
How transferable this is, one does not know. The original SARS virus was much more aggressive than the current coronavirus. The death rate from SARS is estimated to be around 14-15 percent, about 30 times higher than that of the current virus. FHI writes in its latest risk assessment that it believes Covid-19 has a death rate of around 0.4 to 0.6 percent.
Weakened immune system
It is known that coronavirus in the acute phase can cause an overreaction of the immune system and that, therefore, immunosuppressive treatment can be of great importance.
In hindsight, this overreaction can potentially continue, which can create inflammation in the body, but also the exact opposite:
“It has long been suggested that people infected with measles have long weakened their immune systems and are vulnerable to other infections,” said Daniel Chertow of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda.
The same has been observed in patients with SARS.
– I am not saying that this is the case of Covid-19, I am only saying that there are many things that we do not know, he points out.
Heart damage
The heart is one of the organs that is vulnerable to an overreaction of the immune system.
In the acute phase of Covid-19, about a third of patients develop cardiovascular symptoms. It’s definitely one of the short-term effects, Sichuan University cardiologist Mao Chen tells Nature.
The challenge is that these problems are cardiomyopathy, which is an injury to the heart muscle itself that affects the heart’s ability to pump blood. These can be long lasting.
According to Nature, the virus can also cause blood clots in the lungs and damage the body’s circulatory system by infecting cells within the blood vessels.
– My big concern is the long-term effects, says Chen, and says that the dangers can be persistent for a long time. At present, however, there is very little research in the field.
ME – chronic fatigue syndrome
The long-term effects listed above primarily affect seriously ill patients who have been admitted to hospital, but a concern for many is reports that for some the feeling of illness does not go away. Instead, they are chronically depleted.
Over the past nine months, more and more people have reported crippling fatigue and malaise after having the virus. Support groups on Facebook have thousands of members. They struggle to get out of bed or to work more than a few minutes or hours at a time. A study of 142 patients discharged from hospitals in Rome found that 53 percent reported fatigue two months after symptoms began. A study from China showed that 25 percent had abnormal lung function after three months, and 16 percent were still tired, Nature writes.
According to the magazine, the symptoms are reminiscent of MS, which is a disease for which there is still no clear definition, explanation or treatment.
Also read: Ragnhild (32) is invisibly ill: – Outsiders know little, but they mean a lot
– People reporting chronic fatigue after COVID-19 describe similar challenges as MS patients, Nature writes, noting that MS patients often have unpleasant encounters with the health service.
– In many online forums, they are said to have received little or no support from doctors, perhaps because many of them had only mild or no symptoms of covid-19 and were never admitted to hospital. It will not be easy to establish a connection between COVID-19 and fatigue, Nature describes.
Research has been done on SARS that has suggested a link between chronic fatigue and illness. According to a report from Canada, 22 patients were described as having persistent fatigue, muscle pain, depression, and trouble sleeping. One study found that 40 percent of SARS patients had chronic fatigue.
– It is not clear how the virus can cause this damage, but a 2017 meta-study indicated that many patients had persistent mild inflammation, which was possibly caused by the infection, reports Nature.
In a Cambridge study earlier this year, this was linked to the possibility of a depression tsunami in the future.
Also read: Three vaccines struggle to get approved first: favorites can create additional challenges
[ad_2]
