News release
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Many people with COVID-19 make a full recovery and return to their original health status; However, some people have symptoms or other consequences weeks or months after the first SARS-CoV-2 infection. These heterogeneous symptoms were the subject of the virtual “Workshop on Post-Acute Effects of COVID-19” organized by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) on December 2 and 4, 2020, in collaboration with other institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health. An article recently published in Annals of Internal Medicine describes the workshop. More than 1,200 registered participants, including researchers, clinicians and affected community members, discussed what is known about the impacts of COVID-19 and the knowledge gaps that need to be addressed in future research.
The constellation of symptoms and other effects experienced by those who do not return to their original health status after COVID-19 is referred to by many names, including post-acute effects of COVID-19 (PASC), and long or long. Get COVID. The symptoms can be very varied in severity and duration and can affect many organ systems. Reported symptoms include severe fatigue, cognitive impairment and shortness of breath, as well as psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression. Long-term effects of COVID-19 have been reported in all age groups and demographics and in individuals with asymptomatic, mild, or severe initial COVID-19 disease. If only a small proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infections lead to longer-term effects, the global burden of disease will be significant.
In addition to reviewing existing data, the workshop presenters identified important knowledge gaps. Epidemiology in particular has not been fully characterized and will need to be expanded to identify and help vulnerable groups of people. The full clinical spectrum of post-acute COVID-19 is not yet known, nor the reasons why symptoms manifest so differently in individuals. The underlying pathophysiology has not been established and may be due to SARS-CoV-2 itself or the immune response to infection.
Because COVID-19 is a new disease, researchers are still documenting the spectrum of recovery and trying to understand the different outcomes of patients. People who do not return to their original health status have a variety of clinical conditions that require individualized and multidisciplinary approaches to treatment.
During the workshop discussions, it was emphasized that longitudinal studies, ideally including systematic assessments of different organ systems and including diverse populations, will be needed to correctly characterize post-acute COVID-19. Careful study of the virus and its immune response to infection can help researchers understand how post-acute COVID-19 manifestations arise. These research efforts require collaboration between clinicians, researchers, advocacy groups and patient communities.
Article
For Lerner et alTowards Understanding COVID-19 Recovery: National Institutes of Health Workshop on Post-acute COVID-19. Annals of Internal Medicine DOI: 10.7326 / M21-1043 (2021).
WHO
Dr. Emily Erbelding, director of the NIAID’s Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID), is available for comment.
Contact
To schedule interviews, contact Elizabeth Deatrick, (301) 402-1663, [email protected].
NIAID conducts and supports research – at NIH, in the United States and worldwide – to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases and to develop better means to prevent, diagnose and treat these diseases. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related material are available on the NIAID website.
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