Although the world is through the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and most of the population has moved on from the disease, a small subset of the population still deals with COVID-19 to this day. These are people who are still suffering from symptoms such as insomnia, lightheadedness, extreme fatigue and brain fog due to a condition called long COVID.
An April survey by the federal government’s Household Pulse revealed that close to 10% of adults who contracted the communicable disease are still experiencing sustained coronavirus symptoms. Given the novelty of the condition, researchers are still studying long COVID in an attempt to identify its underlying mechanisms and come up with effective options for long-term treatment.
According to a study that was recently published in the “Open Forum of Infectious Diseases,” the first step to treatment should be to stop looking at long COVID as a single condition. The study involved nearly 6,000 participants, with 4,504 members of the participant pool having COVID prior to the study while 1,459 were never infected with the disease.
During the study period, researchers studied the chronic symptoms long COVID patients suffered from at the third- and six-month intervals. They found that 72% of the participants with COVID had minimal symptoms, with 17% reporting tiredness, joint or muscle aches, and headaches, as well as 5% reporting a combination of headaches, tiredness, loss of taste and smell, and joint or muscle aches. Another 6% of the participants experienced symptoms across various biological symptoms.
The study is essential because it outlines how the presentation of long COVID symptoms changes over time, senior author Kari Stephens explains. Stephens is an adjunct professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education and a research section head at the Department of Family Medicine.
Prior research into the chronic condition has mostly focused on individual symptoms without looking at symptom clusters or patterns. Those studies typically didn’t compare data from large groups and primarily focused on data captured by health providers during doctor visits instead of gathering data from patients themselves.
Stephens notes that the recent study will provide health providers with information on how long COVID presents in different patients over the long-term, stating that it will help clinicians understand how to treat the condition over time better. The research could allow clinicians to use customized treatment plans for different patients depending on the presentation of their symptoms, she said. It will also help in the creation of policies and the deployment of funds to support long COVID programs.
In addition to that, many companies, such as BiondVax Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (NASDAQ:BVXV), are working on bringing to market immunotherapies to offer better treatment options for infectious diseases.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to BiondVax Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (NASDAQ: BVXV) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/BVXV
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