![]() However, the researchers discovered a correlation between the number of symptoms of long COVID participants had and lower serotonin levels 4 months later.įurther research in mice showed that the immune reaction caused by these remaining viruses caused inflammation that blocks tryptophan - a building block of a serotonin - uptake in the gut in mice, as well as reducing serotonin storage. While serotonin was reduced during the active SARS-CoV-2 infection, serotonin levels during infection did not predict a person’s risk of developing long COVID. The researchers discovered that a subset of patients with long COVID had traces of the virus in their stool samples even months after infection, meaning it had remained in the gut. ![]() For each of these groups, they investigated the biochemical profile of 58 patients considered representative of these symptom clusters, and compared them to the biochemical profile of people while infected with SARS-CoV-2, as well as with the biochemical profile of people who had recovered from COVID-19 with no remaining symptoms. They placed these patients into 8 different groups based on their clusters of symptoms. The study authors merged previously published datasets on the biochemical profile of several cohorts of long COVID patients who had experienced symptoms for 3 to 22 months after confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2. The research results appear in the journal Cell. Now, research by a team from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has shown that people with long COVID have lower levels of serotonin, and discovered that this is driven by an inflammation pathway mediated by SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA stored in the gut, months after infection. Al-Aly added that “here are threads of evidence suggesting that inflammation and microglial activation in the brain may be contributing to neurocognitive symptoms in people with long COVID.” This has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent emergence of long COVID cases, as researchers have sought to understand the mechanisms underpinning long COVID in order to discover potential biomarkers for diagnostics and treatment targets.ĭr. Serotonin may play a role in long COVID brain fog Consequently, not much is known about the mechanisms of neurologic abnormalities that we see in people with flu and also people with COVID-19.” We pretty much ignored this area completely. “Unfortunately, prior to the pandemic, we had invested very little in understanding post-viral illnesses. Ziyad Al-Aly told Medical News Today in an email: ![]() It is not fully understood what causes this symptom, however, and this lack of understanding is partly due to the fact that post-viral syndromes received very little attention from researchers and doctors before the pandemic.Ĭhief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. That long COVID can cause any combination of over 200 symptoms, including neurocognitive effects such as fatigue, memory loss, problems concentrating and “brain fog,” has been recognised since the first long COVID patients started talking about their symptoms in 2020.Īs far back as January 2021, some researchers started to coin the term “ neuro COVID” to describe the symptoms experienced by this particular cohort of COVID long haulers’ who report symptoms over 12 weeks after the initial infection. ![]() Long COVID, also known as post COVID-19 syndrome, affects around 5-10% of people who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the risk is higher for people who were hospitalized with COVID-19, and lower for people who received a vaccine. ![]()
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