Long Covid, protracted symptoms of illness after recovery from an infection with Covid-19, represents a medical crisis in its own right. US researchers have now identified four risk factors that favor Long Covid. Autoantibodies play the main role.
These are antibodies that bind to an endogenous antigen. They are characteristic of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatism, but also occur in cancer, for example. In the study of 309 patients, specific autoantibodies were involved in two out of three cases.
The other factors included a high coronavirus burden, type 2 diabetes and reactivation of the Epstein-Barr virus (EPV), a herpesvirus. 98 percent of people are infected before the age of 40, usually at a young age. While the infection in childhood is asymptomatic, it causes glandular fever in adolescents. Like all herpes viruses, the EPV lies dormant in the body for life and can be reactivated.
Early diagnosis can improve therapeutic measures
If this is the case, it can lead to exhaustion, among other things, which is also observed in more than half of those suffering from Long Covid, according to the study. Other common symptoms of Long Covid include coughing in a quarter of those who have recovered and loss or change in smell in just under a fifth.
According to the study published in the journal “Cell”, an early diagnosis of the four identified risk factors immediately after infection can help to prevent or mitigate Long Covid through appropriate therapeutic measures. (SDA)