Abstract The previous acute respiratory diseases caused by viruses originating from China or the middle east (e.g., SARS, MERS) remained fast developing short diseases without major sequalae or any long-lasting complications. The new COVID-19, on the other hand, not only that it rapidly spread over the world, but some patients never fully recovered or even if they did, a few weeks later started to complain not only of shortness of breath, if any, but general weakness, muscle pains and ‘brain fog’, i.e., fuzzy memories. Thus, these signs and symptoms were eventually labelled ‘long COVID’, for which the most widely used definition is ‘new signs and symptoms occurring 4–8 weeks after recovering from acute stage of COVID-19’. The other most frequent manifestations associated with long COVID include headache, loss of memory, smell and of hair, nausea, and vomiting. Thus, long COVID is not a simple disease, but complex disorder of several organ systems malfunctioning; hence, it is probably more appropriate to call this a syndrome. The pathogenesis of long COVID syndrome is poorly understood, but initial and persistent vascular endothelial injury that often triggers the formation of microthrombi that if dislodged as emboli, damage several organs, especially in the brain, heart and kidney, by creating microinfarcts. The other major contributory mechanistic factor is the persistent cytokine storm that may last longer in long COVID patients than in others, probably triggered by aggregates of SARS-Co-2 discovered recently in the adrenal cortex, kidney and brain. The prevalence of long COVID is relatively high, e.g., initially varied 3–30%, and recent data indicate that 2.5% of UK population suffers from this syndrome, while in the US 14.7% of acute COVID-19 patients continued to have symptoms longer than 2 months. Thus, the long COVID syndrome deserves to be further investigated, both from clinical and basic research perspectives. Open access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10787-023-01194-0
How could they get that so wrong? It just takes a quick google e.g. Long-term sequelae following previous coronavirus epidemics, 2021
There is more: But since the presenting signs of long COVID are so nonspecific, e.g., similar to the poorly understood, often used and criticised ‘chronic fatigue’, experts soon realized that long COVID should be a diagnosis by exclusion, e.g., all other possible cardiac, pulmonary, gastrointestinal and neurologic causes must be eliminated. And that's the only mention of ME/CFS. Although long COVID is caused by a novel virus, post-infection disease is not new. Think of post-polio syndrome and AIDS. This seems to be the only mention of other post-infectious diseases. No mention of PEM. I haven't read it all yet, just searched these keywords.
I see most of the authors are based in California, but the last author, Veronica Muller, has a Hungarian connection: School of Medicine, American University of Health Sciences, 1600 East Hill St., Signal Hill/Long Beach, CA, 90755, USA Department of Pulmonology, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
I tried looking for information on the university. It seems to be mostly a nursing school with a medical school just starting, but I may have misunderstood the information.
Yes, Müller is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as a pulmonologist and she was one of the speakers at the long covid symposium of the Academy that I wrote about in the Visegrad thread a while ago. I don't think I wrote about her presentation in particular because from my memories she mostly talked about organ damage kind of stuff (eg in the lungs, etc) probably having lingering effects and said the people affected were older with chronic diseases etc. So it didn't sound like our long covid. To be honest, some of the images remind me of the slides used at the symposium, so maybe they built on that at least in part.
I just looked up both long covid symposiums the Academy organized. She gave a presentation at both, the second one together with Sandor Szabo, the lead author here (who is probably Hungarian-American and is also the member of the Academy). The title of that was the same: What is really long covid? So they probably just reworked that a bit and published it here. It gives good insight into how ME/CFS is seen here though. Not necessarily aggressively psychologized like in the UK or Norway (only a bit), more like totally ignored. That's why my website has no competition. And why it is also difficult for me to engage with scientists/doctors/anyone because it is rare that it is even mentioned. Little opportunity.
This “university” appears to be a for-profit Christian nursing school. I think I’ve had enough for tonight.
Btw, maybe no one cares but I went down this rabbit hole and found that being a member of the Academy is a little bit less special than it sounds. There are 19 000 members (of all fields). It means looser scientific ties to the Academy. The members with the much closer ties have ranks like "proper member" or "corresponding member" etc and are collectively called the academicians. There are less than 800 of them. So basically being just a member doesn't hold the same weight.
What is really Long Covid? well really Long Covid could be what people who caught Covid in the first wave and are still ill have. Although i reckon that in comparison to other post-viral illness there is as yet no really Long Covid
I think really Long Covid must be what people from the first SARS outbreak in the early 2000s might still be dealing with.
