Doctors at the University of Texas Dell Medical School are engaging with long-COVID patients hoping that it will help them predict who is most likely to experience lingering symptoms and what the best forms of treatment and care might be going forward. 

In a recent interview with Texas Standard, Dr. Michael Brode, medical director of the post-COVID-19 program at UT Health Austin, discussed the new program and what those involved seek to achieve.

Is COVID-19 Really Different from Other Viral Pandemics?

According to Brode, no one is yet certain why some COVID-19 patients experience long-haul syndrome and others don’t. It’s even difficult to predict what percentage of COVID patients will suffer extended effects. “We’re just at the beginning of really understanding what the underlying cause of this is,” he said. “We’ve seen it in other viral illnesses before. After the Spanish influenza of 1918, many people had long-term symptoms, neurologic problems, changes in their personalities. And so, it may not be unique to COVID itself. We’ve seen it in other post-viral illnesses; we’ve just never seen it on this scale before.” It may still be discovered, he concedes, that there is something specific to COVID that makes it worse than previous viral pandemics.

Commonalities and Differences Among Long-Haulers

The problem with the research to date, said Brode, is that it lumps all long-haulers together. “I think we’ve got to get to a point where, instead of talking about long COVID as a forest, we should talk about the specific trees,” he said. Brode views long-COVID patients as belonging to one of three categories:

• Those who had severe illness, who were:
  • Hospitalized
  • Spent time in ICU
  • Have scarring and other damage from severe COVID
• Those who did not require hospitalization but who are having persistent problems 
• Those experiencing new symptoms after their COVID recovery, particularly dysregulated immune, almost autoimmune, responses

Brode also mentioned that the prominence of neurologic disorders has been surprising. Most long-haulers complain of brain fog, and one study showed that participants lost an average of seven IQ points. Nearly all patients in the program have reported severe fatigue and post-exertional malaise (exhaustion after an activity that normally would not be strenuous). 

How Widespread is Long-Hauler Syndrome?

Despite experts’ inability to accurately predict how many patients will experience ongoing symptoms or complications, most estimate that about 10-30% of COVID-19 patients will prove to be long-haulers, though a few put that estimate as high as 75%. The new Dell Medical School program seeks to be a research leader and educational resource, as well as a top provider of effective, compassionate care for long-COVID sufferers.

As for how long the long-term symptoms might last, there’s no foolproof way to gauge that, but people who have experienced long-term symptoms from other viral illnesses have sometimes taken between one and five years to really feel that they were approaching their old sense of feeling normal. The new program aims to find ways to speed up that healing process. 

Putting the “Kibosh” on Doubt

It’s unfortunate, said Brode, that many long-COVID patients encounter doubt and disbelief; not only from doctors but also from people who recovered from COVID without lingering symptoms or complications. He urges both groups not to add insult to injury. “What these patients are going through is absolutely real,” he said. “Patients who come in have sometimes seen four or five doctors and not gotten good answers. We have to believe them and take their issues seriously, even if we can’t immediately explain them from what we know.”

*Diaz, J. (2021, Sep. 23). Long Haul COVID Is Real. A New Program Is Working With Patients To Understand It. Texas Standard. https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/long-haul-covid-is-real-a-new-program-is-working-with-patients-to-understand-it/ 

Much about the novel coronavirus, i.e., COVID-19, is still not fully understood. As research progresses and our knowledge of the virus increases, information can change rapidly. We strive to update all of our articles as quickly as possible, but there may occasionally be some lag between scientific developments and our revisions.