Long COVID Study: Scientists Find Key Symptoms Amid Search for Treatment

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A federal study aims to define long COVID in an attempt to help future research for treatment of the mysterious condition.

A federal study begins to identify symptoms of long COVID-19 amid search for treatment
The scientists involved in the large study have proposed a definition for the condition
The definition is based on 12 key symptoms that most separate individuals with long COVID-19 from those who were not infected with the coronavirus

Scientists who are part of a federal study have started to identify key symptoms of long COVID that differentiate people who have the condition from those who the coronavirus has never infected.

The team also proposed a definition of long COVID-19 based on the symptoms they identified in the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Thursday.

Key Symptoms of Long COVID

During the early days of the health crisis, many people were found to have experienced a variety of debilitating symptoms. These persisted even long after they recovered from being infected with the coronavirus, as per CNBC.

Patients later adopted the name long COVID-19 to describe the condition, and scientists formally call it post-acute sequelae (PASC). However, there has yet to be a systematic, universally accepted definition for long COVID-19 for research. Such a definition could become the foundation for future tools to diagnose the mysterious condition.

In a statement, the author of the study, Dr. Leora Horwitz, a professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, said that the study was made to come up with a concrete, replicable specific definition for the condition.

The research received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and examined almost 10,000 individuals across 85 hospitals, health centers, and community centers in 33 states in the US.

Early findings of the study noted a dozen symptoms that were found to most distinguish long OCVID. According to ABC News, millions worldwide have had long COVID and have shown dozens of widely varying symptoms, such as fatigue and brain fog.

Developing Potential Treatment

Despite the many cases, scientists are still perplexed about what causes the condition among patients and why it only affects some people. They also do not have any treatment for it and are unsure how to diagnose it.

Horwitz said she sometimes heard people say everyone is tired from the health crisis. However, she argued that there is something different about people with long COVID and added that it was important to know the factors.

The study compared the participants with 1,100 separate individuals who the coronavirus had not infected. Health experts estimate that about one in three coronavirus patients have experienced long COVID.

The other lead author of the study, Andrea Foulkes, said that it is essential to define long COVID before they can even begin to think of developing treatments. She argued that if they cannot distinguish people who have long COVID from those who do not, they would not know whether or not treatment is effective, said USA Today.