A team of researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and St Vincent's hospital Sydney have found clear biological marker in patients experiencing long COVID.
Chansavath Phetsouphanh, Senior Research Associate at UNSW's Kirby Institute and co-lead author on the paper, said this study describes the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the immune system through analysis in a laboratory setting.
Of the 62 COVID patients involved in the study, 30 percent showed some symptoms of long COVID.
"These are biological characteristics which can help us define a medical condition in an accurate and reproducible way," said Phetsouphanh.
Interestingly, the study found that the severity of one's experience with COVID-19 showed no link to developing the long-lasting symptoms seen in long Covid.
Supporting this finding, one participant in the study Doris Gal gave a first-hand account of her experience of long COVID.
Proving the biological basis for long COVID will not only open up ways to treat and monitor the condition, but it also, for patients like Gal, confirmed a biological basis of the ongoing impacts of the disease.
The researchers said that new studies would need to be conducted to see if the impacts of long COVID are milder or rarer in those who have been vaccinated or with different variants, such as the now dominant Omicron variant.
(This story was published from a syndicated feed. Only the headline and picture has been edited by FIT)
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