59% of long COVID patients got worse on catching coronavirus again

[Hip]

A survey of long COVID patients found that when they caught SARS-CoV-2 once again:

• 42% found their long COVID got worse after catching coronavirus again
• 17% found their long COVID got a lot worse after catching the virus again
• 28% did not get any worse on catching the coronavirus again
• 13% found catching the virus again actually made their long COVID a bit better

In the survey, "a lot worse" was defined as moving down one level or more on the ME/CFS scale of: very severe, severe, moderate, mild, remission after catching SARS-CoV-2 again.

The survey found that 59% of LC patients got either worse or a lot worse after catching COVID once again.


A similar survey found that for existing ME/CFS patients, when they caught COVID the first time, 38% reported becoming permanently worse, with 21% becoming a lot worse (meaning moving down one level or more on the ME/CFS scale).

 

[hapl808]

A similar survey found that for existing ME/CFS patients, when they caught COVID the first time, 38% reported becoming permanently worse, with 21% becoming a lot worse (meaning moving down one level or more on the ME/CFS scale).

Interesting how close the overall numbers ended up. Not that a survey has tight confidence intervals, but still kinda interesting. And makes some sense given our own experiences of catching various viruses. I would say personally 2 out of every 3 bad illnesses I got had lasting bad effects. These only tended to happen every 3-5 years (flu, really bad colds, injuries, etc), but also every once in awhile I'd feel better after one (but I always thought it might be due to different treatments like antibiotics). So maybe along the same lines.

Either way, a 60% chance of worsening after each bout of COVID doesn't sound great with a zillion cases a day. I can't tell you how many people I know who lately have been 'fighting off a cold' but swear it's not COVID.

 

[pattismith]

I wonder if brain insulin resistance may be involved in long covid (and in my own attention deficit...)

Glucose metabolism have shown to be involved in some neuropsychiatric diseases:

Genetic: a causal relationship on psychiatric phenotypes through circulating CRP, glucose, and urate. 2022 | Phoenix Rising ME/CFS Forums

and altered brain glucose metabolism may happens independantly of diabetes and could be involved in covid and post covid (here a small part only of this interesting article):

Biomedicines | Free Full-Text | Insulin Resistance in Peripheral Tissues and the Brain: A Tale of Two Sites | HTML (mdpi.com)

Indeed, the study by Montefusco et al. found elevated insulin and C-peptide levels in both diabetic and euglycemic COVID-19 and post-COVID patients [83]. Similarly, Chen et al. [85] found in non-diabetic COVID-19 patients that markers of insulin resistance were elevated 3–6 months after recovery from COVID-19.

These studies show that COVID-19 is associated with the development of insulin resistance, that insulin resistance occurs in both hyperglycemic and euglycemic patients, and that such resistance can persist long after recovery from COVID-19.

Several mechanisms for COVID-19-related hyperglycemia and insulin resistance have been proposed and include response to the inflammation of the cytokine storm, elevations in angiotensin II that result from a decrease in ACEII levels, T cell imbalance, and downstream effects of RE1-silencing transcription factor [84,86,87]. Interestingly, metformin, which can alter each of these four mechanisms, has shown some promise in the treatment of COVID-19 in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients [88].

 

[tcamde]

I took me 2 years to recover to 70% from my initial covid infection that started my long covid, but a new infection has brought me back down to 20%. It is very scary since it is almost impossible not to get infected again after the virus is now endemic.