RIGHT SPEAK: Scientists Make Breakthrough Discovery to Diagnose Long COVID; Long Covid’s Lingering Financial Side Effects, and other C-Virus related stories

Scientists Make Breakthrough Discovery to Diagnose Long COVID:

Symptoms persisting for more than three months are linked to long COVID.

COVID-19 vaccinations saved 2.5 million lives between 2020 and 2024, according to a new comparative effectiveness study. Similar to the flu, health experts say the best defense against COVID is staying up to date with the most recent vaccine. But some variants hit harder than others, especially in children, older adults, and people who are immunocompromised. Although it’s not unusual for COVID symptoms to linger for several days or even weeks following a negative test result, symptoms that persist three months or longer after onset are an indicator of long COVID.

The chronic condition can feel “similar to autoimmune, lung, heart, neurological or psychological disorders. Some symptoms are mild and others are completely debilitating. They may come and go, change or get worse over time. You may feel like you never really got better from your initial bout with COVID at all,” explains Mayo Clinic.

It’s estimated that five to 10 percent of cases lead to long COVID. Moreover, most patients don’t feel “back to normal” for 12 to 18 months.

Despite the evolution of the COVID-19 vaccine, there isn’t an approved test for diagnosing long COVID.

“If a patient arrives in clinic and they relate the persistence of typical signs and symptoms of long COVID, 12 weeks or more after COVID -19 infection, I give them a presumptive diagnosis, but I don’t have any blood tests or biomarkers to confirm this diagnosis,” William Stringer, MD, a Lundquist Institute investigator, said in a news release.

However, Stringer and a team of scientists believe they’re on the precipice of identifying a potential long COVID biomarker. If corroborated by other research centers, the biomarker would be the first “quantifiable indicator” of its kind.

The study, which appears in the journal Infection, was led by researchers from City of Hope’s Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Specifically, they were looking for traces of SARS-CoV-2 protein fragments in extracellular vesicles (EVs). These proteins don’t naturally exist in healthy human cells, leading scientists to hypothesize that their presence could be a clear biomarker for long COVID. --->READ MORE HERE

NIAID-RML via AP

Long Covid’s lingering financial side effects:

LONG COVID’S TOLL — More than five years after the Covid-19 pandemic first ravaged the nation, many Americans are still dealing with the social and economic fallout of having contracted the disease.

People with long Covid — those who have new or persistent symptoms lasting three months past infection — have experienced worse financial and employment outcomes, lasting up to three years after their initial infection, compared with people who haven’t had the disease, according to a study published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open from researchers at Rush University Medical Center, Yale School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and other research institutions.

Long Covid patients reported worse work impairment, missed work and financial distress compared with those who never had Long Covid, the study found. Vaccination against Covid was associated with improved work and economic outcomes.

Not just physical: “While much of the focus in Long COVID research has been on the medical impact, we must also consider the sustained financial burden faced by those whose symptoms persist,” lead author Michael Gottlieb, an emergency medicine doctor and vice chair of research at Rush, said in a statement.

Addressing the financial burden of long Covid might “require policy interventions, such as expanded disability benefits or workplace accommodations to help combat the work and financial impact of this condition,” the authors wrote.

The researchers analyzed self-reported data from more than 3,600 participants in the Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections Registry, a CDC-funded initiative aimed at better understanding Covid’s long-term effects.

Why it matters: About 6 percent of U.S. adults suffer from some form of long Covid, according to CDC estimates. The National Institutes of Health believes that as many as 23 million people have the illness, which can range in severity from mild to debilitating.

The symptoms, which can include fatigue, headaches and brain fog, can be life-disrupting for many patients. Some treatments, like Paxlovid, have shown promise in reducing symptoms, but being diagnosed and finding suitable treatment can be difficult because of the disease’s wide range of symptoms that often overlap with other conditions. --->READ MORE HERE