Mexico.- Many people around the world experience sdebilitating symptoms weeks or even months after having suffered covid-19, and that the virus is no longer detected in your respiratory tract. However, the reason why it occurs this way is not yet fully known.
Jocelyn Kaiser of the journal Science recently wrote about it, gathering information about scientists who are exploring the causes of the effects that occur after suffering the infection, while seeking treatments for the prevention of this condition when it lasts over time.
Various unexplained symptoms
Prolonged covid can include symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, headaches, general pain, fatigue, “mental confusion”, shortness of breath, fever, chronic cough, depression and anxiety that persist or appear four weeks after the initial infection. Symptoms can be severe enough to interfere with work and daily tasks.
The explanations include the existence of possible reservoirs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the body, defects in the immune system or metabolic problems caused by the infection, but a precise answer is still lacking, Kaiser describes in his writing.
The author rescues the points of view of specialists such as Dr. Francis Collins from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), who comments “we are going to solve this with very large studies that collect a large amount of data on symptoms, physical findings and measurements. from laboratory “.
Fighting for an answer
The study will enroll up to 40 thousand people between adults and children who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 recently or previously, to explore the causes of the effects after the infection and that are called by the health union as covid in the long term . , prolonged or post-covid-19 covid syndrome. This will be achieved with an NIH award of more than $ 470 million to conduct the research, as part of the Covid-19 Research Initiative to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER), from the University Langone Health Center. from New York (NYU), from where more than 100 researchers will be recruited in 35 institutions that will begin to enroll patients during October. About half will be children, including some newborns, says Jocelyn Kaiser.
Results are expected to be achieved in approximately 18 months. Researchers will look for risk factors, as well as molecular and metabolic processes that may explain the study results, while finding a way to treat and block those prolonged COVID symptoms.
Read more: Why did he do it? Councilor of the INE asks to return to earn more than AMLO
The data
The study
About 60 percent of the people in the study will have acute infections and the rest will be people with the sequelae. People with severe or milder COVID-19 will be included, as well as some people who were vaccinated before becoming ill. A comparison will be made between individuals whose symptoms persist with those who recover quickly (Kaiser, 2021).