8 people as the entire control group... yeah I'd say "may" is the operative word in the title. My takeaway from long covid is that it's probably as severe as the much more deadly pandemic of the Spanish Flu. Considering there's now a newfound interest in "long flu", I think a spotlight has now been placed on the impact of severe respiratory illness. Whether that illness be covid or one of the any other respiratory illnesses.
They are studies, and frankly, without something like this, doing things like the appropriate power calculations and risk assessments for larger studies would be hard to do.
It's strange that the phrase "long covid" has suddenly jumped into our lexicon, when there has been a similar tiny minority of patients reporting similar symptoms from the other coronaviruses for decades now.
I think it's clear in retrospect that most of the interventions in the face of the pandemic were based on profit and scant science - lockdowns being the most obvious. But increased study and awareness of post-infection syndromes without the kind of high-brow dismissal that these patients have received up until now... well, that's certainly an acceptable silver lining.
hopefully we will get somewhere with these studies. The lack of solid research on a disease that affects millions (likely a good percentage undiagnosed) is really tough for patients - and myself really, as I've found i likely suffer from this.
Finding out about autonomic dysfunction and small fiber neuropathy as I researched my own fatigue and finding out I likely have this has been very challenging.
Hard to treat symptoms with immunological conditions. I mean, there are vitamins and supplements, but noone is gonna generally hand out economy-sized bottles of controlled substances for exhaustion, etc.
These sorts of conditions are systemic, and the causes and ways of dealing with the accompanying syndromes are probably always going to be different from individual to individual (well, likely the exact physiological causes anyway).
There has been a shift - an understandable one, and one I by and large support (absent some edge cases) - to move away from causal language for observational studies.
Not to worry, there's three dozen commenters on the way to attest long COVID is definitely the source of their many nonspecific ailments that could easily be ascribed to various other illnesses.
Problem with those conditions and long COVID and CFS are generally similar: No really reliable guaranteed test for most of them, just a series of symptomatic diagnoses and years of ruling out conditions. No offense, but while some people might be full of crap, you sound really insensitive.
Most logical, rational adults would seek a second opinion, at least in places where those are available; they usually are. Interesting that I said 'some people' and you generalised.
FWIW, if my doctor were unfriendly enough, though, I might do that also.
There's no such thing as "long COVID" specifically. Any serious viral infection has the potential to cause sequalae in susceptible patients for reasons that are still not well understood. Some of those are detectible in lab tests to an extent but there's no single clear diagnostic test.
they are pretty well understood now with growing evidence of viral persistence in the gut and immune cells, and immune dysfunction causing autoantibodies.
they are also distinct from other conditions like ME/CFS or other sequelae although they may share overlapping symptoms. A lot of research is going into different PAIS post acute infection syndromes
Think of AIDS before the immune system dysfunction was found. That's where we are with Long Covid. One cause, a myriad of apparently unrelated effects--that's not how biology tends to work. Rather, there's something deeper we haven't found. And we certainly can't test for what we haven't found.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
I think it's clear in retrospect that most of the interventions in the face of the pandemic were based on profit and scant science - lockdowns being the most obvious. But increased study and awareness of post-infection syndromes without the kind of high-brow dismissal that these patients have received up until now... well, that's certainly an acceptable silver lining.
Finding out about autonomic dysfunction and small fiber neuropathy as I researched my own fatigue and finding out I likely have this has been very challenging.
Please don't do this. It's the medical equivalent of copy/pasting shit you don't understand from Stack Overflow.
Go see a doctor who has a degree and training.
These sorts of conditions are systemic, and the causes and ways of dealing with the accompanying syndromes are probably always going to be different from individual to individual (well, likely the exact physiological causes anyway).
When your doctor says that you're wrong, do you accept his advice or tell him he should be more like Dale Carnegie?
FWIW, if my doctor were unfriendly enough, though, I might do that also.
The findings also support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 may cause structural nerve damage, which is perhaps the even bigger worry. :(
they are also distinct from other conditions like ME/CFS or other sequelae although they may share overlapping symptoms. A lot of research is going into different PAIS post acute infection syndromes