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A group of researchers recently hypothesized that complex immune responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus might explain the long-term effects of COVID-19.

They also suggest these immunologic mechanisms may contribute to the rare, serious side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, co-authors Dr. William J. Murphy and Dr. Dan L. Longo explain how autoimmunity may be the mechanism causing these two distinct complications of the worldwide SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

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Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid?

Resia Pretorius

My lab has found significant microclot formation in long Covid patients. Unfortunately, these are missed in routine blood tests

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Long Covid drove my wife to suicide. We must give others like her hope

The medical community must find answers for those suffering from long Covid. They are running out of time and hope

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One of the puzzles of the pandemic economy is the ongoing labor shortage, with business owners struggling to find workers amid the so-called "Great Resignation." But new research points to another — and more troubling — factor that helps explain the nation's shrinking workforce: long COVID.

Millions of Americans are struggling with long-term symptoms after contracting COVID-19, with many of them unable to work due to chronic health issues. Katie Bach, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said she was "floored" when she started crunching the numbers on the ranks of workers who have stepped out of the job market due to long COVID.

Her analysis found that an equivalent of 1.6 million people are missing from the full-time workforce because of the disease, which can leave people incapacitated for months with persistent symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, headaches, memory loss and heart palpitations.

"It was so much bigger than I thought it would be," Bach told CBS MoneyWatch. "Then it was like, `Why is no one talking about this?'"

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From very early in the pandemic, it was clear that SARS-CoV-2 can damage the heart and blood vessels while people are acutely ill. Patients developed clots, heart inflammation, arrhythmias, and heart failure.

Now, the first large study to assess cardiovascular outcomes 1 year after SARS-CoV-2 infection has demonstrated that the virus’ impact is often lasting. In an analysis of more than 11 million U.S. veterans’ health records, researchers found the risk of 20 different heart and vessel maladies was substantially increased in veterans who had COVID-19 1 year earlier, compared with those who didn’t. The risk rose with severity of initial disease and extended to every outcome the team examined, including heart attacks, arrhythmias, strokes, cardiac arrest, and more. Even people who never went to the hospital had more cardiovascular disease than those who were never infected.

The results are “stunning … worse than I expected, for sure,” says Eric Topol, a cardiologist at Scripps Research. “All of these are very serious disorders. … If anybody ever thought that COVID was like the flu this should be one of the most powerful data sets to point out it’s not.” He adds that the new study “may be the most impressive Long Covid paper we have seen to date.”

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The study’s enrollment period ended before vaccines were widely available, so 99.7% of infected veterans were unvaccinated when they contracted COVID-19. Therefore, the paper doesn’t address whether long-term cardiovascular problems may arise after breakthrough infections in already vaccinated people. (A new analysis tackling that question is now under review at a journal.) Another limitation of the study is that the veteran population skews older, white, and male: In all three groups, about 90% of patients were men and 71% to 76% were white. Patients were in their early 60s, on average.

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How Long Covid Exhausts the Body

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New U.S. research on long COVID-19 provides fresh evidence that it can happen even after breakthrough infections in vaccinated people, and that older adults face higher risks for the long-term effects.

In a study of veterans published Wednesday, about one-third who had breakthrough infections showed signs of long COVID.

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The risk of developing long covid is lower among people with the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 than with delta, shows an analysis of self reported data to the UK ZOE covid app.1

Researchers from King’s College London looked at data logged by 56 003 adults who tested positive between 20 December 2021 and 9 March 2022, when the omicron variant was dominant. They compared these with 41 361 who tested positive between 1 June 2021 and 27 November 2021, when the delta variant was most common.

Among the cases in the omicron period, 2501 people (4.5%) reported they had experienced long covid, defined as having new or ongoing symptoms four weeks or more after they had tested positive. This compared with 4469 (10.8%) of people in the delta period, according to the analysis, published as a letter in the Lancet.

Overall the study found a reduction in odds of long covid with the omicron variant versus the delta variant of between 0.24 and 0.5, depending on age and time since vaccination. But because far more people have been infected during the omicron wave than during the delta wave, the total number with long covid will be higher. Earlier this month the Office for National Statistics estimated that the number of people experiencing long covid increased from 1.3 million in January 2022 to two million on 1 May 2022.23

Lead researcher Claire Steves said, “The omicron variant appears substantially less likely to cause long covid than previous variants—but still, one out of every 23 people who catches covid-19 goes on to have symptoms for more than four weeks.