Mélanie Lacasse has a heart that beats much too fast when she makes the least physical effort. This family doctor from Gatineau, suffering from the post-COVID-19 syndrome, called long COVID, had to learn to reinvent herself and change her lifestyle. A situation all the more difficult because it affects her profession considerably.
More than half of patients with long Covid suffer from organ damage a year after the initial symptoms, new research suggests.
Even those who were not seriously ill when diagnosed with the virus report problems, with extreme difficulty breathing and cognitive impairment among the persistent symptoms.
The study, the results of which were published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, involved 536 people.
Six months after their initial diagnosis with coronavirus, the patients underwent an MRI scan which revealed ongoing health problems, with 62% of participants suffering from organ damage.
Comments closedMany repeat infections are mild, but some studies suggest people who have been infected with COVID more than once are at a greater risk of severe disease or long COVID.
Comments closedAs leaders have shifted to the position that masks and tests are matter of personal choice rather than collective self-preservation, they have implicitly silenced a vital message to the citizenry about how pandemics actually come to an end. It is this: less transmission means fewer mutations; fewer mutations means less variation, the fuel of evolution. Reducing infections, then, puts the brakes on viral evolution.
The combined actions of “letting the virus rip” in a population with varying degrees of protective and waning immunity created by vaccines or previous infections “has led to unprecedented increase in viral diversification in 2022,” as one group of researchers explained in a recent paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Comments closedEven mild COVID-19 cases can have major and long-lasting effects on people’s health. That is one of the key findings from our recent multicountry study on long COVID-19—or long COVID—recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Comments closedDo not listen to powers that be who pretend that getting infected with COVID multiple times is now no big deal. They’re asking you to lower your guard for a nasty virus that can invade the brain, disregulate the immune system and damage the vascular system.
This strategy has led to predictable results — more direct deaths, more excess deaths, more disease and some 1.4 million Canadians reporting some form of long COVID over the last two years.
Comments closedPeople who are COVID-aware or at high risk discuss the mental health burden of staying safe.
Comments closedThe Quebec government is setting up 15 clinics across the province to treat people with long COVID and Lyme disease. The first one to open in Montreal is located at the Jewish General Hospital.
Comments closedThe CIUSSS West-Central Montreal regional health authority announced the opening of a clinic for patients with persistent symptoms of COVID-19 and Lyme disease at the Jewish General Hospital on Monday.
“Although most of the people who get COVID-19 recover within a few weeks, some — even those who had mild versions of the disease — might have symptoms that last a long time afterward,” Dr. Karl Weiss, chief of the Jewish General Hospital’s division of infectious diseases, noted in a statement. “These symptoms can be disabling, making it difficult to perform daily activities or to return to work or school. They may vary in intensity from day to day, and over time.
“Research and knowledge about treating this illness known as long-COVID syndrome is emerging and rapidly evolving. Our goal in establishing the referral centre is to provide patients with leading-edge care, while improving our understanding of the disease.”
Comments closedA clinic dedicated to people with long COVID or persistent symptoms of Lyme disease has just opened at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. This reference centre, which will combine clinical and research on these two syndromes still poorly understood, is one of the 15 clinics announced last May by the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS).
“Although we do not yet have a very good understanding of the pathophysiology of these two diseases, we know that both of them sometimes cause long-term sequelae that persist even though the infection seems to have disappeared from the organism,” explains Dr Leighanne Parkes, microbiolgist-infectiologist at this new clinic.
Comments closedBrain fog isn’t like a hangover or depression. It’s a disorder of executive function that makes basic cognitive tasks absurdly hard.
Comments closedAlthough most people who have COVID-19 recover within a few weeks, some struggle with heart symptoms and problems such as brain fog, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and difficulty breathing, even months after the initial infection goes away.
Comments closedA groundbreaking rehab program at The Ottawa Hospital is offering hope to people suffering from “long COVID.”
Comments closedVaccination against SARS-CoV-2 lowers the risk of long COVID after infection by only about 15%, according to a study of more than 13 million people. That’s the largest cohort that has yet been used to examine how much vaccines protect against the condition, but it is unlikely to end the uncertainty.
Comments closedOverall, the risk of any heart complication over the course of one year was 63 percent higher in people who had gotten COVID compared with those in the contemporary control group. At the end of a year, there were 45 additional cardiovascular events—such as stroke or heart failure—per 1,000 people among those who tested positive for COVID.
Comments closed“But the void in my brain is still there. I’m young and I feel like I have a brain that’s gone off the rails.”
Comments closed