People suffering from COVID-19 long-hauls are only a step closer to discovering relief from symptoms they've been experiencing since they got infected with the virus.
These people also called "long haulers," an ABC13 News report said, are those whose symptoms stay long following their contraction of the infection.
According to health officials, new research has shown a probable cause for symptoms of long-haul. Chief medical officer for Mission Health Dr. William Hathaway said, each time they get an additional piece of scientific data, even if it is not the answer, it's contributing to their insight of the pathology of COVID-19, "how it's caused."
As indicated in this report, it is a sight of hope as researchers are getting closer to coming up with a treatment for this presently untreatable, long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19.
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Antibody Found
Hathaway explained, one of the problems with a chronic disease where there is no absolute treatment is, there is a need to hope to think that an individual is going to get better.
A week ago, researchers from the University of Arkansas were able to identify a probable cause of COVID-19 long-haul symptoms.
Specifically, they discovered an antibody that shows itself weeks after an individual falls ill with COVID-19. The study, published in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences site, shows that antibodies could lead to the body attacking itself, rather than the virus.
The chief medical officer also said, they have seen something similar in the past when people would get strep throat and they developed antibodies to the strep bacteria, a bacteria, and not a virus, and then later on, on the said antibodies, can, in fact, attack parts of the heart.
He added results from the research could result in treatment to prevent such a long-haul phenomenon from occurring.
Lingering Symptoms
As indicated in the said UAMS study published in The Public Library of Science ONE or PLOS ONE, as many as 30 percent of the COVID-19 patients suffer from lingering fatigue, shortness of breath, and brain fog.
Moreover, the cause of COVID-19 long-haul has eluded researchers although this discovery of the UAMS team sheds essential new light on the molecular-level mechanisms behind it.
According to professor and chief of the Division of Nephrology in the UAMS College of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine John Arthur, MD PhD, everything that they have found is consistent with this antibody as the initiator of long COVID, therefore, it is an exciting development that merits further research.
Is the Antibody Causing the Long-COVID Symptom?
One occurrence, for instance, is that of Marion Karin Scanlon's a mountain woman's struggle with long-haul COVID-19 symptoms in January.
She said it was foggy in her brain, and what happened to her was, she was very short-tempered. She added, she would just utter things that would cut people off.
This study said Hathaway, still does not prove that this antibody is causing the symptoms. Hathaway said, aside from this research, scientists have learned as well that women whose age ranges from 25 to 50 years old are more likely to suffer from long-haul symptoms.
He explained too, that researchers have found that how ill an individual gets from COVID-19 does not correlate with whether he will experience long-haul symptoms.
Hathaway said some smaller studies have shown as well, the probability of vaccines that lessen an individual's chance of developing long-haul symptoms, although that those results are still initial findings.
Report about the possible cause of long COVID-haul symptom is shown on WHAS11's YouTube video below:
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