In a new study, researchers used Medicare data to characterize the long-term risk of death and hospital readmission after being hospitalized with COVID-19 among patients 65 years and older. The study demonstrates that among patients who were admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 and discharged alive, the risk of post-discharge death was nearly twice that observed in those who were discharged alive from an influenza-related hospital admission.
Comments closedThis study provides us with strong evidence that we need to stop looking at COVID-19 as strictly an upper respiratory disease and start viewing it as a systemic disorder that impacts multiple organs. The continued dysfunction we observed in organs other than the lungs suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction could be causing long-term damage to the internal organs of these patients.
Comments closedWith this test, there are no nasal swabs and no waiting 15 minutes for results, as with home tests. A person simply blows into a tube in the device, and an electrochemical biosensor detects whether the virus is there. Results are available in about a minute.
The National Institutes of Health in the United States have begun a series of studies to test possible treatments for long COVID, a step eagerly awaited in the efforts of the United States to fight this mysterious disease that affects millions of people.
Comments closedWastewater surveillance became an important tool for detecting COVID-19 outbreaks in communities throughout the pandemic, and it continues to be used in search for coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 as well as other pathogens.
But it’s unclear whether current levels of government funding to monitor wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 will continue beyond next year. Experts are calling on the federal government to create a standardized system for wastewater surveillance to bolster and replace the patchwork being used today.
Comments closedThe chances of becoming infected with COVID-19 while hospitalized increased as the pandemic progressed, according to recent Canadian research.
In fact, significantly more Canadians became infected with hospital-acquired COVID-19 during the fifth and sixth waves of the pandemic — the first two Omicron waves from late 2021 until the spring of 2022 — than during earlier waves, according to the study published in the journal JAMA Network Open. Researchers looked at cases of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between March 2020 and May 2022.
Comments closedComments closedCovid is causing waves of brain damage, heart disease, organ failure, and chronic illness. It’s doing this damage in mild and asymptomatic cases. It doesn’t matter how sick you feel or how fast you recover.
Comments closedIt was thought at first that the pediatric population was relatively spared from the long-term effects of COVID-19 after infection. But this changed rapidly with increasing reports and studies of pediatric patients not fully recovering from acute COVID-19.
« Les personnes porteuses d’un variant génétique particulier ont deux fois plus de chance de ne pas tomber malades lorsqu’elles contractent la COVID-19, indique mercredi une étude publiée dans la revue Nature. »
Comments closedDr. Jennifer Hulme thought her COVID-19 infection was just “average.” She recovered in a matter of days and went back to work.
Several weeks later she was incapacitated.
“I woke up completely disabled, profoundly ill (and) completely changed from my previous self,” the Toronto emergency room doctor said.
Comments closedThe list of neurocognitive issues that Meropol’s team and other researchers must track is extensive: cognitive decline, changes in brain size and structure, depression and suicidal thinking, tremors, seizures, memory loss, and new or worsened dementia have all been linked to previous SARS-CoV-2 infections. In some cases, these longer-term problems occur even in patients with relatively mild COVID-19.
Comments closedAt the peak of a SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant wave in Ontario, wastewater sampling conducted before the surge suggested that COVID-19 cases were 19 times higher than reported because of changes in clinical testing.
Men recently infected with COVID-19 have decreased sperm counts for more than 3 months following even mild infections, and the sperm they do produce is less able to swim, according to new findings presented today at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Denmark.
The findings are intriguing because men produce new sperm every 2 or 3 months, and the findings are based on semen analyses taken after 100 days, suggesting COVID does long-term damage to the male reproductive tract.
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