Community member Fuzzybotbuilder has a fascinating personal story for us next Sunday describing exercises he developed to recover from a stroke. His approach addressed more than physical therapy, it involved engaging his interest in something he wanted to do. Join us for our monthly KosAbility meeting at 4 PM PDT (7 PM EDT) to hear more. Look for a story with a headline beginning “KosAbility,” that’s our meeting, then share your thoughts and questions in the comments.
The impact of COVID19 on people with chronic health conditions has been worrisome all along. We were warned about greater susceptibility to infection and more serious consequences, as well as potentially less protection from vaccinations. But an unexpected consequence could benefit us, even though, regretfully, it comes at a cost to others: Long-haul Covid may be providing information that helps doctors treat other conditions, and may alter how medical services are provided, making it easier for chronically ill people to access care. We’ve already seen a bit of that last point with more options for tele-visits in lieu of in-person medical appointments. However, we also are seeing this option dwindle as the pandemic wears on and vaccine-confidence grows (accurately or not, my county barely has 50% of eligible population vaccinated).
Half or more of the people infected with COVID19 are likely to experience long-haul Covid with symptoms that last up to six months after initial recovery, say Pennsylvania State College of Medicine researchers. After examining 57 studies that included data from 250,351 unvaccinated adults and children diagnosed with COVID19, researchers identified a common set of long term health problems.
- General well-being: More than half of all patients reported weight loss, fatigue, fever or pain.
- Mobility: Roughly one in five survivors experienced a decrease in mobility.
- Neurologic concerns: Nearly one in four survivors experienced difficulty concentrating.
- Mental health disorders: Nearly one in three patients were diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorders.
- Lung abnormalities: Six in ten survivors had chest imaging abnormality and more than a quarter of patients had difficulty breathing.
- Cardiovascular issues: Chest pain and palpitations were among the commonly reported conditions.
- Skin conditions: Nearly one in five patients experienced hair loss or rashes.
- Digestive issues: Stomach pain, lack of appetite, diarrhea and vomiting were among the commonly reported conditions.
A separate, on-going study of a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) found that people with long-haul Covid have problems with exercise similar to people with CFS/ME, a poorly-understood set of debilitating chronic conditions that includes exercise intolerance.
The first cardiopulmonary exercise test done in long COVID produced results much like those found in ME/CFS. That was very good news given the extraordinary funding given long COVID and the potential it provides for a REALLY deep dive into energy production in long COVID (and ME/CFS).
Even if studies don’t find enough commonality among the two different groups, perhaps a better approach to providing medical care will result in benefits to many different chronic patient groups. One of the researchers in the Penn State study, Anna Ssentongo said, “Since survivors may not have the energy or resources to go back and forth to their health care providers, one-stop clinics will be critical to effectively and efficiently manage patients with long-haul-covid. Such clinics could reduce medical costs and optimize access to care, especially in populations with historically larger health care disparities.”
The similarities among long-haul Covid and Lyme disease, CFS/ME, and other maligned misunderstood chronic conditions have been thoughtfully explored by Ross Douthat. Seriously! That conservative writer whose positions on anything else are 180o from mine has chronic Lyme disease and he describes it well in the following NY Times articles.
Now let’s see Douthat go through that without money, connections, and resources—you know, like all the people without health insurance, job stability, adequate income, and help. We can’t wait for every GOP pundit and politician to experience every social and health issue and learn to care about these problems before we have better social and governmental policies to help people.
From the second article above.
(O)ne possible parallel to what long-haul Covid patients are experiencing is myalgic encephalomyelitis, commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome — a debilitating and mysterious affliction that’s increasingly understood as an autoimmune-related condition, in which the body’s own defenses seem to be constantly flaring, independent of actual infection, in ways that consign people to fatigue, brain fog and incapacity.
Similar autoimmune theories are also often applied to the larger constellation of chronic conditions that bear some similarities to what we’ve seen from long-haul Covid: chronic Lyme, multiple sclerosis, rheumatic fever, Guillain-Barré syndrome, various psychiatric conditions that seem to be caused by persistent inflammation in the brain.
And as with Covid, for many of these conditions, there appears to be some precipitating infection. Multiple sclerosis is often associated with the commonplace Epstein-Barr virus, rheumatic fever with the same bacteria that cause strep throat, and Lyme, famously, with bites from ticks that carry a spirochete called Borrelia burgdorferi. Chronic fatigue syndrome isn’t known to have a single agent as its trigger, but as Velasquez-Manoff notes, chronic-fatigue-like symptoms have long been linked to viral infections, from the recent SARS and H1N1 pandemics to the 1918 Spanish flu.
See you next week 31 October at 4 PM Pacific time for our regular meeting