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Tag: long COVID

Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

I’m back, long COVID never went away and world is still a mess

Published March 6, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Toronto Star
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By Heather Mallick

Star readers are the best and my Star readers are even better, a finer grind of bean. While I was off work recently recovering from long COVID, plus a medication error, I heard from many concerned subscribers.

Was I ill? On a lavish vacation? Was I returning? In the nicest possible way, I suspect they were checking if I were deceased, their emails being that little kick you give to possible roadkill. Is that inert coyote going to make it? Well, it looks pretty squished. Has anyone phoned her house?

Readers suggested cures, mainly vitamins and turmeric, but one recommended a device, electric copper rods that look like curling irons. I’m supposed to hold them in my hands, usually after dinner, the reader said. You can sit and watch the news, gently self-electrocuting.

Three and a half million Canadians have long COVID symptoms, but you hardly hear from them or about them, mainly because they work from home, if they work at all. Some symptoms are non-stop exhaustion, breathing difficulty, pain, headaches, insomnia, dizziness. Medical science offers no treatment yet.

Continue readingI’m back, long COVID never went away and world is still a mess
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Low iron levels resulting from infection could be key trigger of long COVIDA man sitting on a couch holding his head in his hands. Photo by Malachi Cowie / Unsplash.
Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Low iron levels resulting from infection could be key trigger of long COVID

Published March 4, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: University of Cambridge
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Problems with iron levels in the blood and the body’s ability to regulate this important nutrient as a result of SARS-CoV-2 infection could be a key trigger for long COVID, new research has discovered.

The discovery not only points to possible ways to prevent or treat the condition, but could help explain why symptoms similar to those of long COVID are also commonly seen in a number of post-viral conditions and chronic inflammation.

Although estimates are highly variable, as many as three in 10 people infected with SARS-CoV-2 could go on to develop long COVID, with symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle aches and problems with memory and concentration (‘brain fog’). An estimated 1.9 million people in the UK alone were experiencing self-reported long COVID as of March 2023, according to the Office of National Statistics.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Atteinte de la COVID longue, une Néo-Écossaise désire que la maladie soit mieux reconnue

Published March 3, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Radio-Canada
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Two months after contracting COVID-19, Beth Wood found that she had trouble concentrating and was easily irritated and always tired. While it is among the 3.5 million Canadians with long COVID, according to Statistics Canada, access to disability benefits remains complex.

Beth Wood has been a social worker for 40 years. Although the boss of the community centre where she works in Halifax offered her support to resume her work, she feels that she is constantly swimming against the current.

She is now considering applying for a long-term disability benefit, but she is concerned that the road is long.

Continue readingAtteinte de la COVID longue, une Néo-Écossaise désire que la maladie soit mieux reconnue
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

De l’espoir pour les femmes atteintes de syndromes de fatigue chronique

Published March 3, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: La Presse
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By Mathieu Perreault

Research into long COVID may benefit other fatigue syndromes that follow infections. These difficult to diagnose and treat disorders affect twice as many women as men. A symbol of sexism in medicine?

“When we started talking about long COVID at the end of 2020, patients told me how close it was to their symptoms,” says Durand, epidemiologist from the Université de Montréal who studied a cohort of patients with long COVID. “These are patients who for years had chronic fatigue, mental fog, abnormally low resistance to exertion. Doctors often told them it was in their heads. These are symptoms that are called “non-specific.” There are no diagnostic tests.”

These problems are often grouped under the term “acute post-infection syndrome.” “The idea is that there are things that have changed with the infection, and there are still sequelae that we can’t measure right now,” says Durand. “Since many people have had COVID-19, there are many cases of long COVID. We are talking about 15% of COVID-19 cases. So there’s a lot of funding for long COVID.”

Continue readingDe l’espoir pour les femmes atteintes de syndromes de fatigue chronique
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Topic: Nova ScotiaView all posts for the topic: Nova Scotia

Nova Scotians with long-term COVID symptoms face disability claim hurdles

Published March 3, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CBC News
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Two months after contracting COVID-19 and recovering, Beth Wood noticed that she was having trouble concentrating, getting winded easily and feeling unusually tired.

Like three and a half million other Canadians, according to Statistics Canada, Halifax’s Wood has long-term COVID symptoms.

Wood has worked as a community social worker for four decades.

She told CBC Radio’s Information Morning Nova Scotia, her employer has been helping her try to get back up to speed at work. But it hasn’t been successful and she is now considering taking long-term disability.

Continue readingNova Scotians with long-term COVID symptoms face disability claim hurdles
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Radio | Ontario Today – February 29, 2024: Is there hope for people living with long covid? Where have you turned for help?

Published February 29, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CBC News
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Dr. Angela Cheung heads up a network of scientists and health practitioners studying long covid. She’s also a senior physician-scientist at University Health Network in…

Continue readingRadio | Ontario Today – February 29, 2024: Is there hope for people living with long covid? Where have you turned for help?
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Topic: cognitive issuesView all posts for the topic: cognitive issues

Long covid may cause cognitive decline of about six IQ points, study finds

Published February 29, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Washington Post
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By Victoria Bisset

It’s more than four years since the first cases of covid-19 were identified — but many of its longer-term effects, including for those living with long covid, remain unclear.

Now, a new study has some worrying findings that suggest covid may have longer-term effects on cognition and memory — and that these lead to measurable differences in cognitive performance.

The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that participants who recovered from covid symptoms had a cognitive deficit equivalent to three IQ points compared with those who were never infected, while participants suffering from unresolved covid symptoms lasting 12 weeks or more experienced a loss equivalent to six IQ points.

Continue readingLong covid may cause cognitive decline of about six IQ points, study finds
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Topic: cognitive issuesView all posts for the topic: cognitive issues

Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores

Published February 28, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Conversation
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By Ziyad Al-Aly

From the very early days of the pandemic, brain fog emerged as a significant health condition that many experience after COVID-19.

Brain fog is a colloquial term that describes a state of mental sluggishness or lack of clarity and haziness that makes it difficult to concentrate, remember things and think clearly.

Fast-forward four years and there is now abundant evidence that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – can affect brain health in many ways.

In addition to brain fog, COVID-19 can lead to an array of problems, including headaches, seizure disorders, strokes, sleep problems, and tingling and paralysis of the nerves, as well as several mental health disorders.

A large and growing body of evidence amassed throughout the pandemic details the many ways that COVID-19 leaves an indelible mark on the brain. But the specific pathways by which the virus does so are still being elucidated, and curative treatments are nonexistent.

Continue readingMounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Long COVID Doesn’t Always Look Like You Think It Does

Published February 27, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Time
Published on:
By Jamie Ducharme

In the spring of 2023, after her third case of COVID-19, Jennifer Robertson started to feel strange. Her heart raced all day long and she could barely sleep at night. She had dizzy spells. She felt pins and needles in her arm, she says, a “buzzing feeling” in her foot, and pain in her legs and lymph nodes. She broke out in a rash. She smelled “phantom” cigarette smoke, even when none was in the air.

Robertson, 48, had a feeling COVID-19 might have somehow been the trigger. She knew about Long COVID, the name for chronic symptoms following an infection, because her 11-year-old son has it. But “he didn’t have anything like this,” she says. “His set of symptoms are totally different,” involving spiking fevers and vocal and motor tics. Her own experience was so different from her son’s, it was hard to believe the same condition could be to blame. “I just thought, ‘It’s really coincidental that I never got well, and now I’m getting worse,’” she says.

Continue readingLong COVID Doesn’t Always Look Like You Think It Does
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Millions of Americans suffer from long COVID. Why do treatments remain out of reach?

Published February 26, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: USA Today
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By Eduardo Cuevas, Karen Weintraub

More than a year after catching COVID-19, Sawyer Blatz still can’t practice his weekly rituals: running for miles in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park or biking around his adopted hometown.

In many ways, the pandemic isn’t over for the 27-year-old and millions of other Americans. It may never be.

They have long COVID, a condition characterized by any combination of 200 different lingering symptoms, some of which, like loss of taste and smell are familiar from initial infections and some totally alien, like the utter exhaustion that makes it impossible for Blatz to walk much more than a block.

Continue readingMillions of Americans suffer from long COVID. Why do treatments remain out of reach?
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Solving the puzzle of Long Covid

Published February 22, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Science
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By Ziyad Al-Aly, Eric Topol

Preventing infections and reinfections is the best way to prevent Long Covid and should remain the foundation of public health policy. A greater commitment to nonpharmaceutical interventions, which include masking, especially in high-risk settings, and improved air quality through filtration and ventilation, are requisite. Updating building codes to require mitigation against airborne pathogens and ensure safer indoor air should be treated with the same seriousness afforded to mitigation of risks from earthquakes and other natural hazards. Reducing the risk of serious outcomes after COVID-19 and some prevention of Long Covid can be attained with vaccination of a wider spectrum of the population.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Irish scientists discover why people with long Covid can suffer ‘brain fog’

Published February 22, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Irish Times
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By Kevin O'Sullivan

The reason why people with long Covid can suffer from “brain fog” has been discovered by Irish scientists.

The breakthrough has profound importance for the understanding of brain fog and cognitive decline seen in some patients with the condition, according researchers at Trinity College Dublin.

It brings the possibility of new treatments for the condition, but also for other neurodegenerative illnesses such as multiple sclerosis (MS), they said.

The research, published in Nature Neuroscience on Thursday, shows disruption to the integrity of blood vessels in the brains of patients suffering from long Covid and brain fog.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Long Covid ‘brain fog’ may be due to leaky blood-brain barrier, study finds

Published February 22, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Guardian
Published on:
By Nicola Davis

From forgetfulness to difficulties concentrating, many people who have long Covid experience “brain fog”. Now researchers say the symptom could be down to the blood-brain barrier becoming leaky.

The barrier controls which substances or materials enter and exit the brain. “It’s all about regulating a balance of material in blood compared to brain,” said Prof Matthew Campbell, co-author of the research at Trinity College Dublin.

“If that is off balance then it can drive changes in neural function and if this happens in brain regions that allow for memory consolidation/storage then it can wreak havoc.”

Writing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Campbell and colleagues report how they analysed serum and plasma samples from 76 patients who were hospitalised with Covid in March or April 2020, as well 25 people before the pandemic.

Continue readingLong Covid ‘brain fog’ may be due to leaky blood-brain barrier, study finds
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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Study shows 43% to 58% lower prevalence of long COVID among vaccinated people

Published February 20, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CIDRAP
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By Stephanie Soucheray

A new study based on 4,605 participants in the Michigan COVID-19 Recovery Surveillance Study shows that the prevalence of long COVID symptoms at 30 and 90 days post-infection was 43% to 58% lower among adults who were fully vaccinated before infection.

The study appeared yesterday in the Annals of Epidemiology.

The 30- and 90-day timeframes were meant to compare two different definitions of long COVID. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines the condition as new or persistent symptoms 4 weeks after infection, while the World Health Organization definition defines it as 12 or more weeks after infection.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Long COVID rates vary significantly by state. See where California ranks

Published February 16, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: San Francisco Chronicle
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By Aidin Vaziri

About a quarter of U.S. adults who had COVID-19 during the past four years endured persistent symptoms lasting at least three months following their infection. But the prevalence of long COVID varied significantly by state, with California having a relatively low incidence compared to the national average, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Long COVID encompasses over 200 symptoms that can last for months or even years after a coronavirus infection, including extreme fatigue, brain fog, heart palpitations, sexual dysfunction or digestive disorders.

The CDC’s breakdown of long COVID hotspots revealed a clear correlation between areas with higher rates of persistent symptoms and those with the greatest skepticism about the pandemic, per research from the National Institutes of Health.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

COVID patients are 4.3 times more likely to develop chronic fatigue, CDC report finds

Published February 14, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: ABC News
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By Mary Kekatos

COVID-19 patients are at least four times more likely to develop chronic fatigue than someone who has not had the virus, a new federal study published Wednesday suggests.

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at electronic health records from the University of Washington of more than 4,500 patients with confirmed COVID-19 between February 2020 and February 2021.

They were followed for a median of 11.4 months and their health data was compared with the data of more than 9,000 non-COVID-19 patients with similar characteristics.

Fatigue developed in 9% of the COVID patients, the team found. Among COVID-19 patients, the rate of new cases of fatigue was 10.2 per 100 person-years and the rate of new cases of chronic fatigue was 1.8 per 100 person-years.

Continue readingCOVID patients are 4.3 times more likely to develop chronic fatigue, CDC report finds
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Topic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia

Protect Our Province masking message on New West billboard takes aim at COVID

Published February 8, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: New Westminster Record
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The pandemic has highlighted the lasting health impacts viruses can have, long after the acute infection is over and done with.

Many viruses, not just Covid, play a role in causing more serious long-term diseases. Epstein- Barr Virus (EBV), the mononucleosis or kissing disease virus, is associated with Multiple Sclerosis.

Recently, B.C. rolled out an at home self-test for Human Papilloma Virus, that’s because HPV can cause throat and cervical cancer.

After the Great Influenza of 1918, it took us years to learn that children born in and around that time were later at higher risk for Parkinson’s disease (remember Robert De Niro in the movie Awakenings), not to mention cardiac disease and diabetes.

Continue readingProtect Our Province masking message on New West billboard takes aim at COVID
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BC’s pandemic budget may “wind down” in 2024Photo of two masked friends walking in a corridor in an underground public transit station. Photo by Charlotte May / Pexels.
Topic: British ColumbiaView all posts for the topic: British Columbia

BC’s pandemic budget may “wind down” in 2024

Published February 6, 2024

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Peak
Published on:
By Michelle Young

BC’s budget and fiscal report covers a “three year fiscal plan” for housing, sustainability, and healthcare. The report states, “As the funding for pandemic contingencies are set to wind down by the end of 2023/24, it is anticipated that the Ministry of Health will wind down or integrate any services into ministry operations, as appropriate, to support the ongoing health and well-being of British Columbians.”

The report did not elaborate, and The Peak reached out to the Ministry of Health for more information, who said they “will have an update to share following the release of the 2024/25 budget at the end of next month.”

DoNoHarm BC, who advocates for safer COVID-19 protections in the province, is concerned about the effects a potential budget cut could have for residents and provides a series of recommendations.

Continue readingBC’s pandemic budget may “wind down” in 2024
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