Inflammation persisting despite recovery from acute Covid infection is thought to lie at the heart of long Covid.
Doctors in India are grappling to diagnose and treat unexplained and persistent symptoms of long Covid patients due to limited guidelines, whereas researchers have flagged inadequate studies on the condition.
With the World Health Organization declaring an end to Covid as a global health emergency in May last year, focused efforts are underway around the world to estimate the burden of long Covid among the population.
The condition refers to the set of lingering symptoms affecting varied body parts and persisting well beyond the acute Covid infection period, including cough, muscle and joint pain, fatigue, brain fog and difficulty in focusing. The viral disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
While studies have suggested that about a third of those moderately or severely infected are likely to suffer from long Covid, region-wise though, incidence could vary.
A study by researchers, including those from Harvard Medical School, US, estimated that 31 per cent of the once-infected people in North America, 44 per cent in Europe, and 51 per cent in Asia, have long Covid, which is “challenging the healthcare system, but there are limited guidelines for its treatment”. It was published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases in September.
One such study by Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, conducted from May 2022 to March 2023 on 553 patients who had recovered from Covid, found that about 45 per cent had lingering symptoms, persistent fatigue and dry cough being the most common.
“There is limited exploratory research on the long Covid syndrome with scarce data on long-term outcomes,” the authors wrote in the study published in the journal Cureus in May this year.
Understanding the long-term effects of the virus is important for developing management strategies, optimising healthcare delivery, and providing support to recovered Covid patients in the community, they said.
Dr Rajesh Sagar, Professor of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, said, “Looking at the current state of long Covid studies in India, it is too premature to say that we understand the condition well enough to know how to diagnose or treat it.”
Animesh Samanta, assistant professor at School of Natural Sciences in Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, said, “While studies in India highlight the growing recognition of neurological complications in long Covid patients, more focused research on neuroinflammation is needed.” Doctors, too, have reported a rise in patients complaining of symptoms that they did not have pre-Covid.
“People who never had asthma in the past, post-Covid, with every viral infection, they get a long cough, shortness of breath and wheezing, which require the use of inhalers or nebuliser,” senior consultant Dr Neetu Jain, who runs a post-Covid care clinic at Pushpawati Singhania Hospital and Research Institute, New Delhi, said.