The science behind poor cold cures

While many mysteries remain about the ongoing coronavirus, it is increasingly better described and documented.This sometimes scattered condition causes up to one in eight patients to develop diabetesPersistent odor, fatigue, prolonged loss of smell… and many other signs.But if a common cold Can it also cause these effects? From the ongoing coronavirus to the ongoing cold. Are we facing a real syndrome, what we commonly call an “uncured cold”?

So far, science hasn’t done much research on colds that don’t work well.But a project team The UK’s coronavirus outbreak has begun to connect the dots. It all started in 2020 when Queen Mary University of London began a national study on COVID-19. At the time, its focus was on understanding how people experienced the consequences of the coronavirus through a sample of 19,000 people.

A team of researchers led by Giulia Vivaldi began to realize that people More than just signs of persistent coronavirus reported. There are people who don’t test positive for coronavirus but have the same symptoms; that is, they have a bad cold but they develop symptoms similar to those of persistent COVID-19. That is to say, ‘Cold not cured

‘.

Symptoms of a cold that is not cured or is not cured after long-term treatment

Vivaldi decided to pay special attention to these patients.Now he presents his results in the journal electronic clinical medicine of lancet.As described, some The most common symptoms of a persistent cold are:

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• Cough for more than 4 weeks after infection.
• Stomach pain and diarrhea for more than 4 weeks.
• Prolonged fatigue.

None of those who said they had an uncured cold or flu had such symptoms memory loss. SARS-CoV-2 infection is indeed associated with a higher risk of “brain fog,” which may be particularly relevant to COVID-19 at the moment.

Are these signs and symptoms worse if you have had a more serious infection? Vivaldi thinks so, but more research is underway to determine why some people experience long-term symptoms and others don’t. Even if they have mild infections, including coronaviruses and other pathogens, such as those we think are associated with poorly treated colds.

Doctors believe that “these findings not only reveal the long-term impact of COVID-19 on people’s lives; Other respiratory infections. “A lack of awareness, and even a lack of common terminology, hinders reporting and diagnosis of these conditions.”

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Vivaldi emphasized that these “long-term” infections are very difficult to diagnose and treat, “mainly due to the lack of testing and the large number of possible symptoms. It took a long time to detect more than 200 cases.”

More than just a cold: Long flu or persistent pneumonia

In addition to colds, these symptoms may also occur after infection with influenza or pneumonia that is not related to SARS-CoV-2. This can happen “all the time,” as Juan Emilio Losa, a senior doctor and director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Alcorcón Foundation Hospital, explained to Newtral.es. Namely, the well-known inflammatory effects that certain infections leave behind in the body.Even to the point of production changes in immune systemthere are signs that they may lead to rheumatic spectrum diseases, as Dr. José Luis Pablos (Hospital of October 12, Madrid) also explained when he found that antirheumatic therapy saved the lives of severe COVID-19 patients.

David Strain, a professor and emeritus consultant at the University of Exeter in the UK, also has a historical perspective on this phenomenon. “this Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1920 “This resulted in many people suffering from encephalitis lethargica, which took decades to recover from,” he recalled.

The 1918 influenza pandemic left a trail of chronic encephalitis victims depicted in the film Awakening.

The concept of post-pandemic viral diseases in books by oliver sacks Awakening and Robert De Niro’s film of the same name (Penny Marshall, 1990). “Today, around 280,000 people in the UK live with myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome; many claim the trigger is a fairly benign initial viral illness,” stresses Strain.

Perhaps these images are more extreme, but researchers still There is no evidence that symptoms after a cold or flu are equally severe. Or last longer than the extended coronavirus. Although this study adds to the evidence of this, at least in some patients.

As Strain and colleague Paul Harrison, a psychiatrist at the Spanish SMC at the University of Oxford, emphasize, there is still work to be done to unravel the mysteries of post-infectious syndrome. Whether it’s a poorly treated cold or the ongoing coronavirus.Recently, a study was published in BMJ evidence-based medicine While many other authors argue that there is overwhelming evidence that we face an increasingly better-described global public health problem, questions have been raised about the approach to studying long-term COVID-19.