UCSF infectious disease specialist Michael Peluso, MD, who co-leads one of the world’s oldest studies of long COVID, discusses the condition’s mysteries. “There is no smoking gun,” he says. “If that were the case, we would have figured this out two years ago.” What exactly is long COVID? “It refers to unexplained symptoms that are […]
Terrifying ‘post-COVID syndrome’ is next focus for researchers in Bay Area and beyond
The end of the pandemic feels tantalizingly near as vaccines arrive and the pace of new infections slows. But a new coronavirus mystery is set to keep researchers busy in the Bay Area and across the country for years to come. Doctors call the medical conundrum “post-acute COVID syndrome.” Scientists prefer “post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 […]
My ‘Long Covid’ Nightmare: Still Sick After 6 Months
Since March, research studies and treatment centers had been popping up across the country to help unravel Covid’s long-term mystery. One of those is at the University of California, San Francisco. There, Michael Peluso, an infectious-diseases doctor and co-principal investigator of a study of Covid’s long-term impact, and his team have been interviewing about 250 […]
6 Months After Leaving the Hospital, Covid Survivors Still Face Lingering Health Issues
For millions of coronavirus survivors, it’s an increasingly important question: How common, how serious and how long-lasting are the physical and mental aftereffects of Covid-19? A new study — believed to be the largest so far in which doctors evaluated patients six months after they became ill — suggests that many people will experience lingering problems […]
‘What We Know About ‘Long COVID’
On this week’s episode of PODCAST-19, we do a deep dive into “long COVID,” which is when people who’ve survived COVID-19 continue to experience a variety of symptoms for weeks, or sometimes months, after their acute illness. What’s causing this disease to linger for so many people? And what will happen to our health care […]
Four Different Family Members. Four Different Covid-19 Outcomes.
The Ruspini family in Sunnyvale, Calif., went down like dominoes. One by one, they all got the coronavirus in early April, but with different symptoms and recovery trajectories… One of the biggest mysteries of the virus that causes Covid-19 is why it leads to such different experiences for the people it strikes. While some severe […]
Some Coronavirus Patients Are Reporting Symptoms That Last Months. Nobody Knows Exactly How to Treat Them
Kayla Brim laughed when she learned it could take 10 days to get her COVID-19 test results back. “I thought, ‘Okay, well, within 10 days I should be fine,’” she remembers. That was on July 2. More than a month later, Brim is still far from fine… [With] COVID-19, it’s not just the sickest who face a […]
From ‘brain fog’ to heart damage, COVID-19’s lingering problems alarm scientists
One of the few systematic, long-term studies of COVID-19 patients with mild acute symptoms is underway in San Francisco, where researchers are recruiting 300 adults from local doctors and hospitals, for 2 years of follow-up. “We don’t have a broad idea of what’s happening” after the initial illness, says Steven Deeks, an HIV researcher at […]
Think COVID-19 lasts 2 weeks? This patient has been suffering for months
What scientists understand least about COVID-19 are its long-term effects. Conventional wisdom says most cases are mild and the infection lasts about two weeks, but some people have been dealing with serious symptoms for a lot longer. Cliff Morrison is a health care administrator in the Bay Area and has been experiencing symptoms for months. He’s participating […]
We Thought It Was Just a Respiratory Virus
In late January, when hospitals in the United States confirmed the presence of the novel coronavirus, health workers knew to watch for precisely three symptoms: fever, cough, and shortness of breath. But as the number of infections climbed, the symptom list began to grow. Some patients lost their sense of smell and taste. Some had nausea or diarrhea. Some had arrhythmias or even heart attacks. Some had damaged […]