Fatigue, cough, shortness of breath, intermittent fever or even loss of taste or smell, how can we explain the persistence of symptoms months after Covid-19 infection? Two recent studies provide possible explanations for this “long Covid” syndrome, the mechanisms of which are still poorly understood on a physiological level.
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The first study published in the journal The Lancet is based on MRIs carried out in 259 patients who were hospitalized for a Covid-19 infection in 2020 and 2021. The researchers were then able to observe that almost a third of the patients presented “ anomalies » in several organs, such as the brain, lungs or kidneys, several months after their discharge from the hospital.
Changes
Enough to prove – according to the authors of the study – that the organs undergo changes after hospitalizations linked to Covid-19. For certain researchers, the study also suggests that “long Covid” could be explained by an interaction between, at least, two anomalies of different organs.
Another avenue, another study published this time in the journal eBiomedicine and conducted by researchers from theInserm whose work rather opens the trail of a mechanism concentrated in the brain. Based on around fifty patients, the results of their study suggest that Covid-19 infection can lead to the death of certain neurons and thus be the cause of symptoms that persist over time. According to Public Health France, “long Covid” has affected 4% of the French population, or more than two million people over the age of 18 in France.
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