Concerns over lasting symptoms among COVID- 19 long haulers
• Brain fog, neuropsychological effects vary in duration, cause, researchers find
M• Gavi inaugurates new partnership to reach ‘ zero- dose’ children across marginalised communities
ORE than two years after the COVID- 19 pandemic erupted, scientists have become increasingly aware of a group of patients- so- called ‘ long haulers’- who remain plagued by a combination of symptoms long after the infection passes.
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, specialists from Massachusetts General Hospital ( MGH) describe their findings related to their multidisciplinary clinical work in this area.
Commonly, patients with long COVID present with ‘ brain fog’, a vague description including lack of sleep, anxiety, depression and a history of headache or migraine combined with trouble with attention and word finding difficulties as well as executive dysfunction,” says Zeina Chemali, MD, MPH, director, Neuropsychiatry Clinics and Training at MGH, and medical director of the Mccance Center for Brain Health . “In the patients we treated with long COVID who presented with “brain fog” we found that the root cause of this commonly used term is often multifactorial.”
In their study conducted over 15 months from February 2020- May 2021, Chemali and colleagues followed 87 confirmed and 13 presumed cases of non- hospitalised individuals with lasting symptoms beyond six months after COVID- 19 infection.
A key feature of the study is that most ( 75 per cent) of the cohort were white educated women. “Even though we know Black Americans and Latinx individuals got very sick with COVID- 19, we did not see them in the long haulers clinic,” notes Chemali who emphasizes this finding likely follows from disparity in healthcare with inability to find time and access to the care needed.
The post- COVID- 19 long haulers clinic quickly became the launching base to advance the NIH- funded RECOVER study with principal investigator Ingrid Bassett, MD, investigator in the hospital’s Division of Infectious Diseases. The study is aims to understand how and why COVID- 19 affects people differently. “The most important question is what is it in a person’s make- up that influences how they react to COVID- 19 in a specific way and exhibit certain symptoms?” Chemali asks.
“Why do some people get very sick, others do not, some become long haulers and why do some people never get COVID19 at all?” To date, approximately 200 patients have been referred from the MGH COVID- 19 long haulers clinic to the RECOVER Study and other trials conducted at throughout the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.
Meanwhile, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance yesterday inaugurated the Zero- Dose Immunisation Programme ( ZIP), a new innovative initiative that will provide two consortia of partners with up to US$ 100 million to identify and reach zero- dose children living in displaced communities and fragile and conflict settings. Zero- dose children are those that have not received a single shot of a routine vaccine.
International Rescue Committee ( IRC) and World Vision ( VW) have been chosen to lead the initiative in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel regions respectively, across 11 countries. As of 2020, there were over four million zero- dose children living across the targeted countries.