Dr Anthony Fauci aims to answer ‘a lot of important questions’ about ‘long-haul COVID’ as part of new national initiative

The US government is launching a national initiative to study patients with COVID-19 who suffer from residual symptoms months after recovery, commonly referred to as “long-haul COVIDs,” Dr Anthony Fauci said during a Home briefing White Wednesday.

© Alex Brandon, AP
In this Jan.21, 2021 photo, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks with reporters in the James Brady press conference room at the White House.

The country’s leading infectious disease expert has also revealed a scientific name for the new syndrome – the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) – further legitimizing the suffering population.

“(There are) a lot of important questions that are now unanswered that we hope with this series of initiatives that we will ultimately answer,” Fauci said.

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The announcement comes after a study published last week in the JAMA Network Open found that about 30% of COVID-19 patients reported symptoms that persisted for up to 9 months after illness.

These symptoms included fatigue, shortness of breath, trouble sleeping, fever, gastrointestinal problems, anxiety and depression, as well as “brain fog”.

“Sometimes these symptoms appear long after the time of infection or they evolve over time and they can persist … for months, and can range from mild, annoying to truly disabling,” said Fauci.

The National Institutes of Health expect to integrate data from existing projects on COVID-19 patients into the initiative. One of these projects is the COVID-19 Neuro Databank-Biobank (or NeuroCOVID Project), a database and biobank run by New York University.

The NeuroCOVID project, announced Tuesday, asks institutions and individual clinicians to submit information on neurological symptoms, underlying medical conditions, disease course, complications and outcomes. They can also submit existing samples such as blood, tissue and cerebrospinal fluid to the project biobank.

“As so many people fell ill, it became apparent that there were so many patients who appeared to have neurological conditions that appeared to be associated with COVID,” said Dr Sharon Meropol, program director of the NeuroCOVID project. “Some of them had new conditions, others had existing conditions that were exacerbated.”

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The database will accept information on adults, children, pregnant women and their babies. The identity of patients will be protected by their providers as they are the only ones who can see personal information; the NeuroCOVID project can only see a generated and unidentifiable code referring to the patient.

At the onset of the pandemic, health experts speculated that neurological symptoms may have been triggered by severe COVID-19 illness. But over time, more and more patients with mild to moderate illness began to show these symptoms, said Dr Barbara Karp, program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the United States. NIH.

“As we get into the long haul COVID, the long term consequences of COVID… a lot of it falls into the neurological realm,” she said.

The most common symptom in long haul is brain fog, which includes memory problems, difficulty concentrating and severe fatigue, according to Dr. Pravin George, a neurologist in the neuro-intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic. .

One explanation for the symptoms could be that the immune system attacks normal cells in the body during infection, including brain cells, he said. It could also be caused by inflammation or low oxygen levels characteristic of the disease.

No one can know for sure until this population is thoroughly studied, said George.

“We don’t have the answers, but what is really important is finding out what is out there and this is where a national effort like this really plays a big role,” Karp said. “We hope that in the long term, if we can identify the syndrome, we can develop ways to approach treatment.”

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

Patient health and safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide any editorial contribution.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dr Anthony Fauci aims to answer ‘a lot of important questions’ about ‘long-haul COVID’ in new national initiative