Symptoms Update:
Family Symptoms: I personally still feel great - zero symptoms 5 days after nasal swab experiment with my infected son and 14 days after beginning one full week of intentional exposure to my family's Covid-19. Covid-Mary and daughter Grace feel great as well and appear to be 100%. My son Gene says he still has a sore throat and was feeling a little mentally weak first day back at school earlier this week but now 70% back to normal compared to his worst point last week.
Dr. Shin Yong at Sunway University in Malaysia published an excellent review of what is now known about Long Covid in the May, 2021 journal Infectious Diseases (London). (link below). Here are quotes of several main points:
1. While the actual definition is lacking, a review identified that the most frequent symptoms of long COVID are fatigue and dyspnoea (i.e. shortness of breath) [17,18]. Other less typical symptoms include cognitive and mental disorders, headache, myalgia, chest and joint pains, smell and taste dysfunctions, cough, hair loss, insomnia, wheezing, rhinorrhea, sputum, and cardiac and gastrointestinal issues. These symptoms may persist for up to six months and counting after hospital discharge or symptom onset
2. In brief, long COVID may be driven by long-term tissue damage (e.g. lung, brain, and heart) and pathological inflammation (e.g. from viral persistence, immune dysregulation, and autoimmunity).3. One puzzling feature of long COVID is that it affects survivors of COVID-19 at all disease severity. Studies have discovered that long COVID affects even mild-to-moderate cases and younger adults who did not require respiratory support or hospital or intensive care. Patients who were no longer positive for SARS-CoV-2 and discharged from the hospital, as well as outpatients, can also develop long COVID [24,30,31,41,50].
Apparently, the lungs of Long Covid patients have taken a rather big hit. In a three-month follow-up study of COVID-19 survivors, abnormalities in lung X-rays were detected in 71% of participants, despite that only less than 10% had severe pneumonia [46].
Could Symptoms Last for Years?
Another scary finding of Long Covid is that similar things have happened with prior coronavirus diseases.
For example, you may recall the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus from 20+ years ago. Even 4 years after infection, some people still had symptoms of fatigue and continued muscle and joint paint. As stated by Dr. Yong, "This is rather unsettling as it implies that long COVID may extend beyond just a few months to years."
Future Health Problems Hiding around the Corner
If all this wasn't bad enough, Dr. Yong discussed a study that no one wants to hear and had me shaking my head. It found even young adults mostly free of risk factors for severe Covid-19 were showing highly worrisome pathological findings. For example, in a random four-month follow-up of young adults using various tests - many had evidence of multi-organ impairment. Specifically, at least one radiological abnormality of the lungs, heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, or spleen was present in 66% of survivors [24]. Similarly, another study involving moderate-to-severe COVID-19 patients has shown radiological evidence of lung, heart, brain, liver and kidney impairments persisting for at least 2–3 month after hospital discharge [93].
If all this wasn't bad enough, Dr. Yong discussed a study that no one wants to hear and had me shaking my head. It found even young adults mostly free of risk factors for severe Covid-19 were showing highly worrisome pathological findings. For example, in a random four-month follow-up of young adults using various tests - many had evidence of multi-organ impairment. Specifically, at least one radiological abnormality of the lungs, heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, or spleen was present in 66% of survivors [24]. Similarly, another study involving moderate-to-severe COVID-19 patients has shown radiological evidence of lung, heart, brain, liver and kidney impairments persisting for at least 2–3 month after hospital discharge [93].
Think about this folks, these young adults had no physical symptoms, they felt just fine, but when doing various blood and imaging tests, researchers were finding evidence of impaired livers, kidneys and hearts, putting them in line with having internal organs of people in their 30s, 40s, 50s or higher. Since aging is continuous, having a 20 year old body with a 40 year old kidney or heart is nothing short of a ticking time-bomb when considering everything from diabetes to heart disease to dialysis.
A grim statistic from University of California found more than one-quarter of all people infected with Covid-19 (and not hospitalized) later developed some form of long-haul Covid.
Researchers examined medical records of 1,407 people seen at a range of University of California outpatient clinics and found that two months after Covid-19 diagnosis 27% of patients suffered from either shortness of breath, chest pains, coughs or abdominal pain – and that nearly one-third of those patients had no symptoms during their original infection. This would suggest there is some form of immunological abnormallity that occurred during infection itself that persists after infection, thereby accelerating damage to human tissue. I'll describe what this is in a moment.
In a statement from UC Davis professor Christian Dandrock, "Among outpatients, risk factors made very little difference in the study numbers. That’s also what we’re seeing. Anyone can get long-haul COVID.”
In another study published in the August 2021 journal Lancet (link below), the numbers were even worse. Chinese researchers followed 1,276 Covid-19 survivors at 6 months and 12 months. At six months, 68% of patients said they still had symptoms while at 12 months, 49% said they were still experiencing symptoms. This included dyspnoea (difficulty breathing), muscle weakness, anxiety, depression, problems with mobility and pain or discomfort.
NOT ONLY MILD SYPTOMS
While many Long Covid individuals have mild symptoms, many have far more severe effects. Making my job in understanding Long Covid symptoms easier, a study published in the November, 2021 journal Clinical Rheumatology reviewed Long Haul symptoms from 7 previous published studies on the topic (link below).
While many Long Covid individuals have mild symptoms, many have far more severe effects. Making my job in understanding Long Covid symptoms easier, a study published in the November, 2021 journal Clinical Rheumatology reviewed Long Haul symptoms from 7 previous published studies on the topic (link below).
Right now I'm looking at my second computer screen displaying the results and they do vary. To increase accuracy, below are results from the largest study of 2,159 Long Covid patients by Goetz et. al.
1. Fatigue was the most common symptom affecting about 87%
2. Breathing difficulty affected 71%
3. Chest pain - 44%
4. Cough - 34%
5. Joint Pain - 27%
6. Anosmia (can't smell or taste) - 13%
Major Clue Found in Severe Covid Patients
Trying to understand why some people develop severe Covid-19 symptoms, researchers at Evangelismos Hospital in Athens, Greece randomly selected 29 severely ill patients from their Intensive Care Unit. All patients had a positive PCR test for the SARS Coronavirus.
Doctors were looking for an immune response that could explain the continuing damage to tissues and internal organs. Patients were tested for 5 different types of autoantibodies. It's important to understand that autoantibodies are antibodies that are malfunctioning big time. They are mistakenly attacking healthy tissue and literally eating the person from the inside out. The human body has defenses to prevent this and should not be happening, but these defenses can become weakened as well. Autoimmune attack can cause severe pain, illness and debilitating symptoms in a short period of time. Basically what happens to someone with an organ transplant, but in this case, no foreign tissue was transplanted.
RESULTS
What's fascinating here is that nearly 70% of Long Covid patients tested positive for at least one autoantibody and often several antibodies. This included:
What's fascinating here is that nearly 70% of Long Covid patients tested positive for at least one autoantibody and often several antibodies. This included:
Antinuclear antibodies (ANA): 34.5%
p-ANCA antibodies: 6.9%
c-ANCA antibodies: 6.9%
a-CL antibodies: 24.1%
a-CL antibodies: 24.1%
anti-B2GPI antibodies: 34.5%
anti-CCP antibodies: 3.5%
Total = 68.7%
Go to Day 15
For more details on this and other studies on Long Covid, please visit the links below:
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