{"id":2184,"date":"2021-08-15T17:02:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T17:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=2184"},"modified":"2021-08-15T17:02:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-15T17:02:51","slug":"as-their-numbers-grow-covid-19-long-haulers-stump-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=2184","title":{"rendered":"As Their Numbers Grow, COVID-19 \u201cLong Haulers\u201d Stump Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Authors: Rita\u00a0Rubin,\u00a0MA<\/a>‘<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 32-year-old Hanna Lockman of Louisville, Kentucky, it all started March 12. She was at work when she suddenly felt a stabbing pain in her chest.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt just got worse and worse and worse, to the point I was crying from the pain,\u201d she recalled in a recent interview. At 3 am, the pain sent her to the emergency department. \u201cI had developed a dry cough, maybe a mild fever. I don\u2019t remember.\u201d<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Five months, 16 emergency department trips, and 3 short hospitalizations later, Lockman can\u2019t remember a lot of things. She places the blame squarely on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI joke, \u2018Well, COVID has eaten my brain, because I can\u2019t remember how to remember words, keep track of medication,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cMy brain just feels like there\u2019s a fog.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lockman considers herself to be a \u201clong hauler,\u201d someone who still hasn\u2019t fully recovered from COVID-19 weeks or even months after symptoms first arose. She serves as an administrator of 2 \u201cLong Haul COVID Fighters\u201d<\/a> Facebook groups, whose members now number more than 8000.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The longer the pandemic drags on, the more obvious it becomes that for some patients, COVID-19 is like the unwelcome houseguest who won\u2019t pack up and leave.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnecdotally, there\u2019s no question that there are a considerable number of individuals who have a postviral syndrome that really, in many respects, can incapacitate them for weeks and weeks following so-called recovery and clearing of the virus,\u201d Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said<\/a> in July during a COVID-19 webinar organized by the International AIDS Society.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That appeared to be the case with the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which emerged in 2002 and was also caused by a coronavirus. Some people who were hospitalized with SARS still had impaired lung function 2 years after their symptoms began, according to a prospective study<\/a> of 55 patients in Hong Kong. But only 8096 people<\/a> were diagnosed with SARS worldwide\u2014a fraction of the COVID-19 cases reported each day in the US alone.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent JAMA<\/em>\ufeff research letter<\/a>, 125 of 143 Italian patients ranging in age from 19 to 84 years still experienced physician-confirmed COVID-19\u2013related symptoms an average of 2 months after their first symptom emerged. All had been hospitalized, with their stays averaging about 2 weeks; 80% hadn\u2019t received any form of ventilation.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physicians at a Paris hospital recently reported<\/a> that they saw an average of 30 long haulers every week between mid-May, when the COVID-19 lockdown ended in France, and late July. The patients\u2019 average age was around 40 years, and women outnumbered men 4 to 1.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with SARS, many COVID-19 long haulers are health care workers who had massive exposure to the virus early in the pandemic, neuroimmunologist Avindra Nath, MD, of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), noted in a recent editorial<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, approximately 10% of people who\u2019ve had COVID-19 experience prolonged symptoms, a UK team estimated in a recently published\u00a0Practice Pointer<\/a>\u00a0on postacute COVID-19 management. And yet, the authors wrote, primary care physicians have little evidence to guide their care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For More Information: https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2771111<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authors: Rita\u00a0Rubin,\u00a0MA‘ For 32-year-old Hanna Lockman of Louisville, Kentucky, it all started March 12. She was at work when she suddenly felt a stabbing pain in her chest. \u201cIt just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,289],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-19","category-long-haul-disease"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}