Long COVID doesnt exist as we know it, according to new research – Sydney Morning Herald

The research, led by Queenslands chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, followed about 2400 people who caught COVID-19 and about 2700 people with other respiratory infections, including influenza.

COVID-19 testing at St Vincents Hospital, Sydney, during the pandemic, 2020. Louise Kennerley

A year after infection, 3 per cent of people who were COVID positive reported moderate to severe impairment (i.e. long COVID). Among the people who had caught the flu or another respiratory illness, it was 4.1 per cent.

After controlling for factors including age, sex and whether participants were Indigenous, the researchers concluded there was no evidence that COVID-19 infection made impairment more likely.

Gerrard said long COVID appeared to be a severe and distinct disease simply because of the huge number of infections during the pandemic.

We believe it is time to stop using terms like long COVID, Gerrard said. They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer-term symptoms associated with this virus.

Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard. Getty

This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.

The research will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in April, but it hasnt been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

An earlier iteration of the study, in which the researchers reported the status of participants 12 weeks after infection, was published in last year, however.

In the BMJ study, Gerrard and his research colleagues found similar rates of ongoing symptoms and long-term impairment between those infected with COVID and the flu.

A virologist from the Kirby Institute analyses antibody reaction with the COVID-19 Omicron variant in 2021. Kate Geraghty

They concluded in the BMJ study that long COVID may manifest as a post-viral syndrome of no greater severity than seasonal influenza.

The study was limited by the fact participants with pre-existing illnesses werent identified, and it focused on a highly vaccinated population contending with Omicron, a variant than the ancestral strain.

Long COVID has forced Sydney resident Stephenie Watts to hospital twice and fundamentally rearranged her life. Watts was outraged by the suggestion long COVID should be folded in to other post-viral illnesses.

I felt really frustrated by the fact theyre saying [the phrase] causes unnecessary fear and is probably harmful, because it really undermines the seriousness of the long COVID, Watts said.

Stephenie Watts has suffered cognitive impairment since acquiring COVID-19. Kate Geraghty

Long COVID really does describe what happens to oneself. It was triggered by COVID and you have this long tail of ensuing illness.

Watts has suffered through more than three years of brain inflammation, chronic pain and vascular impacts from long COVID.

I cant walk more than 30 metres without stopping. I can no longer go to the shops because I cant walk the distance in the shops. I cant work because of the migraines and I cant drive, she said.

My whole identity has really been washed away from this.

Watts also cited that found COVID increased the risk of 64 diseases and other negative health impacts 18 months after infection. The seasonal flu was associated only with six.

Jeremy Nicholson, professor of medicine at Murdoch University, said the question at hand was whether long COVID was truly a unique condition worthy of its own name, or just another syndrome caused by a range of viruses.

Unfortunately, this question cannot be simply answered in this work, Nicholson said. The study is observational, based on reported symptoms with no physiological or detailed functional follow-up data.

Without lab analysis of the patients, and without knowing for sure that long COVID isnt physiologically different to other post-viral syndromes, the evidence to dismiss it isnt there, he argued.

This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.

Until this is resolved, we should still use the long COVID term because it pinpoints exactly the underlying viral cause for a given individual, which may be relevant to future treatments, Nicholson said.

Professor Paul Fisher from La Trobe University is working to find signatures in the gut, immune system or blood cells that could help diagnose long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and to tell us if there are any biological differences between long COVID and ME/CFS.

Weve done some work on blood cells, and weve looked at thousands of differences between ME/CFS and healthy controls. And weve done the same with a small number of long COVID patients, Fisher said. They are really similar, if not identical.

The government announced $50 million in research funding into long COVID last year after an inquiry into the illness. Fisher said some ME/CFS researchers have applied for that funding in the hope of finding the link between general post-viral syndromes and long COVID.

Researchers will travel to Canberra later this month with Emerge Australia, the lead organisation for people with ME/CFS, to discuss recommendation 8 of the inquiry, which pushed for more ME/CFS research funding.

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Long COVID doesnt exist as we know it, according to new research - Sydney Morning Herald