The long-awaited study that pinpoints the most common symptoms of people with Covid may fail to provide the relief that millions of Americans, and their doctors, have been seeking.
The study is the first of the National Institutes of Health RECOVER billion-dollar program’s research. It does not give a standard definition of the disorder. Researchers claim it’s a step towards identifying a “common vocabulary” for scientists who are working on treatments for this condition.
“I believe that the amount of research that will come out of this study is going to be an Avalanche,” said Dr. Leora HORWITZ, the author of the study and a professor of medicine and population health at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. She also serves as director of NYU Langone Health’s Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science.
The study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Thursday looked at data collected from 9,764 adults who have been recruited to the RECOVER Trial since last year. The majority of the 8,646 participants had been previously diagnosed with Covid.
The new study focuses on the 12 most common symptoms.
Long Covid symptoms includes:
- Fatigue that never ends
- Brain fog
- Dizziness.
- Thirst.
- Cough.
- Chest pain.
- Heart palpitations.
- Abnormal Movements
- Stomach upset
- Lack of sexual desire
- Loss of taste or smell
- Post-exercise malaise is a term used to describe feeling sick or exhausted after exercise.
It is not the intention of this paper to define long Covid by these 12 symptoms alone. The paper is meant to help focus future research on those symptoms, as scientists try to understand how Long Covid affects our bodies in so many different ways.
The system also has a customizable scoring system based on each patient’s severity of symptoms.
This tool can be used to identify individuals with long Covid in order to do more research, said Andrea Foulkes. She is the principal investigator for the RECOVER data resource core, and the director of biostatistics of Massachusetts General Hospital.
The significance of this is that we then can begin to unravel mechanisms for each of these different manifestations. Foulkes stated that the ultimate goal was to find treatments.
The paper, eagerly anticipated by patients who still suffer from long-term Covid symptoms, and physicians who treat them has been criticized.
Jim Jackson, director of the Behavioral Health ICU Recovery Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee and author of the book “Clearing The Fog: From Surviving To Thriving With Covid Long–A Practical guide” said, “I believe people will be unimpressed by a landmark paper that describes the presence of symptoms people have known for a long time are a problem.”
This is not a paper which offers any therapeutics or solutions. Jackson stated that people desperately want hope in the form treatments.
What is brain fog?
Jackson said that the term “brain fog” is too vague and needs to be described more precisely.
What exactly is brain fog? If we refer to it as a brain injury then there is a treatment. Jackson stated that “we know how to treat brain injury.” “We do cognitive rehab. What do we do with brain fog?
Horwitz clarified a few things during an interview.
In these cases, brain fog includes reading something more than once to fully understand it, not being able to keep appointments that aren’t a part of your weekly routine, or having difficulty following complicated directions.
The term “abnormal movement” was also vague.
During an interview with NBC News researchers from RECOVER were unable further to define what patients meant when they said “abnormal movement” as a symptom. Foulkes stated that “the finding is new and needs further study.”
“When someone comes into my office and I try to screen or discuss whether they have Covid, you’ve rendered this useless to me as a symptom because you can’t describe it,” said Dr. Hugh Cassiere. He is the director of critical care services at South Shore University Hospital in New York.
The RECOVER trial was not a part of the Jackson or Cassiere’s involvement.
Recruitment for Covid long-term treatment trials
Researchers also found that patients with long Covid who had not been vaccinated, and those who were infected prior to the variant taking hold were more likely than others to experience severe symptoms.
The researchers also discovered that certain symptoms tends to cluster together. For example, fatigue and dizziness or brain fog and upset stomach.
Researchers expect to begin enrolling patients with long Covid in clinical trials this year.
Tanayott Thweethai is another study author, and the associate director for biostatistics engagement and research at MGH Biostatistics.
“We need to be very thoughtful in how we study these animals, and how we attempt to understand the tissue within their bodies. Thaweethai explained that understanding chronic diseases is a complex process.
According to a survey, as of April 2015, 15.1% (or more than 100,000,000) of Americans with Covid suffered from long-term symptoms.
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