Co-Founder, Long Covid Kids
Long Covid research continues to proliferate, and a much needed review entitled ‘Long covid—mechanisms, risk factors, and management’ synthesizes the available evidence to explore all relevant findings.
PubMed and Embase databases were searched for articles published on Long Covid between January 2020 and May 2021 with 61 881 articles found in the first instance. These were reduced to 227 which were fully read; of these 218 references were included.
Some key Findings:
1. Any patient with Covid-19 may develop Long Covid, regardless of the severity of their infection and the intensity of the treatment they received. Many patients with mild acute symptoms also develop Long Covid symptoms, with studies showing minimal differences between the prevalence of Long Covid symptoms between hospitalized and non-hospitalized covid-19 patients.
2. Studies around the world have reported various incidence rates for Long Covid with different follow-up examination times after the acute infection, including
· 76% of people at 6 months
· 32.6% at 60 days
· 87% at 60 days, and
· 96% at 90 days.
3. The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) data on the prevalence of Long Covid symptoms estimated that the five week prevalence of any symptom among survey respondents who tested positive for covid-19 between 22 April and 14 December 2020 was 22.1%, while the 12 week prevalence was 9.9%.
4. Symptoms include
Fatigue, which is the most common likely caused by a range of central, peripheral, and psychological factors.
Dyspnea or breathlessness is also a common symptom, possibly caused by ongoing inflammation.
Cardiac involvement - in particular myocarditis - and the development of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTs). ACE2 receptors are highly expressed in the heart, providing a direct route of infection for SARS-CoV-2 and a complex combination of infection, an autonomic nervous system induced pro-inflammatory response, and a level of autoimmunity may all contribute to the establishment of autonomic dysfunction and POTS.
Moreover, neurological symptoms associated with Covid-19 are common and diverse, with brain fog being a key symptom in Long Covid.
This review is a long and comprehensive overview of the empirical data available on Long Covid which provides clear suggestions for possible mechanisms and treatments. Besides being extremely useful for practitioners and patients as a tool for diagnosis and treatment, and to further research the condition, this review offers some hope and validation to the Long Covid community.
Full paper here:
LongCovidKids.org is a patient-led advocacy and support organisation led by Sammie Mcfarland for families of children with Long Covid. Our story started with a short film on long-lasting symptoms of Covid in children.
We are supporting research with The Long Covid Kids Study with PeopleWith.
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If your child experiences any symptoms that indicates they are unwell, it COULD be COVID-19, and you should get them a test to help identify if it is a current Covid infection. Please see our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information.