Persistent Long COVID Symptoms Require Research

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into June 2022, a growing population of people has new or recurring symptoms long after the initial infection, wrote the Annals of Internal Medicine.

As of May 27, 2022, many refer to this condition as "long COVID."

However, the U.S. National Institutes of Health's official name for the condition is 'postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2' (PASC).

Whatever we call it, the current understanding of this condition's pathophysiology, epidemiology, and the course makes caring for these patients a vexing challenge, stated the Annals.

To provide practical guidance for clinicians based on current knowledge, the Annals of Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians held their ninth COVID-19 forum on May 24, 2022.

The program began with Dr. H. Clifford Lane summarizing the results of a study he and colleagues recently published in Annals that attempted to characterize the sequelae after recovery from COVID-19 in a cohort of survivors and controls.

The ongoing study documented a high burden of persistent symptoms in persons after COVID-19.

It revealed no specific cause of reported symptoms in most cases and highly variable antibody levels after COVID-19.

'As we await high-quality evidence to guide our clinical decisions, we must acknowledge how many patients are suffering and do our best to help mitigate their symptoms while avoiding harm, summarized this related Annals Editorial.

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