Researchers Start to Find Clues on Trail of long COVID

AFP/APP

Paris: Tens of millions of people across the world are thought to suffer from long-term COVID, but four years after the pandemic was declared, this elusive condition still cannot be tested for, let alone treated.

However, research could finally start to find early clues on the trail of long COVID, raising hopes of future breakthroughs that may also illuminate other stubbornly ambiguous chronic syndromes.

Long-term COVID is the name given to a wide variety of symptoms still being suffered by people weeks and months after they first contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The most common are fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle pain, and brain fog.

One notable study released last month showed there were significant differences in the proteins in the blood of more than 110 long-term COVID patients.

Onur Boyman, a Swiss researcher and senior author of the Science study, told AFP he believes this is a “central puzzle piece” in what keeps COVID raging for so long in the bodies of some people.

Part of the body’s immune system called the complement system, which normally fights off infection by killing infected cells, remains active in people with long COVID, continuing to attack healthy targets and causing tissue damage, the researchers said.

Boyman said that when people recovered from long-term COVID, their complement systems also improved, suggesting a strong link between the two.

“It shows that COVID is a disease and you can actually measure it,” Boyman said, adding that the team hopes this could lead to a future test.

Researchers not involved in the study cautioned that this complement system “dysregulation” could not explain all the different ways that COVID seems to attack patients.

Still, it is “great to see papers coming out now showing signals that might start to explain long-term COVID,” said Claire Steves, professor of ageing and health at King’s College London.