Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, February two. Our Oscar Ramiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: One of the longest running mysteries of the pandemic has
Speaker 1: been long COVID and what causes it. Studies have found
Speaker 1: that ten people that have recovered from the coronavirus get
Speaker 1: long COVID, which can appear up to three months after
Speaker 1: recovery and last for six months or more in some cases.
Speaker 1: Researchers are zeroing in on the causes, and the two
Speaker 1: leading theories are that the virus turns the immune system
Speaker 1: against the body, and despite recovering, the virus could be
Speaker 1: lingering in the body, not in the blood, but in
Speaker 1: the body's tissues. Yasmin Tayag, contributor to vox, joins us
Speaker 1: for what could be behind long covid. Thanks for joining us, Yasmin,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Let's talk about long covid.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most mysterious parts of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic that scientists and people have had to deal with. So,
Speaker 1: you know, long COVID. Basically, some of these symptoms keep
Speaker 1: persisting with well long after they've recovered from actually having
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen sometimes months longer than that six months, I've
Speaker 1: heard a year in some cases, people are dealing with
Speaker 1: symptoms after their initial infection, and uh, it's been very
Speaker 1: perplexing for scientists. They're starting to zero in on certain
Speaker 1: things that could be causing it. In two big theories
Speaker 1: surround the immune system obviously is going haywires still and
Speaker 1: lingering virus could also be causing problems and people and
Speaker 1: making these problems persist. So yasmin, what are scientists looking
Speaker 1: at and what are they starting to realize what's going
Speaker 1: on with this? Yeah, Well, one of the big challenges
Speaker 1: with long COVID research is that there are so many
Speaker 1: symptoms to account for, and scientists have had to figure
Speaker 1: out what is the root biological cause behind all of them.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's been helpful is understanding
Speaker 1: that there is no one long COVID. There's probably many
Speaker 1: different subtypes of this condition that we're calling on COVID,
Speaker 1: and so with that in mind, they're teasing out the
Speaker 1: different drivers. So, as you mentioned, one of the big
Speaker 1: ones is the immune system, and this was suspected long
Speaker 1: ago um at the beginning of long COVID research. They
Speaker 1: think that because of the initial infection, the immune system
Speaker 1: and some people is just going haywire. Either it's reacting
Speaker 1: to strongly or more likely it's reacting against the self.
Speaker 1: So the body's own immune system starts attacking its own self,
Speaker 1: and that is what's behind some of the symptoms we're seeing,
Speaker 1: such as brain fog or blood clots that are being
Speaker 1: seen throughout the blood. UM. So that's one potential UH driver,
Speaker 1: and the other one, as you mentioned, the other big
Speaker 1: suspect is the possible persistence of virus and the system.
Speaker 1: So this is simply that the virus doesn't entirely get
Speaker 1: eliminated after your initial infect infection and it's just hanging
Speaker 1: out in the body. And one of the difficult things
Speaker 1: UH about studying this is that scientists are finding that
Speaker 1: the virus when it does linger, it's not really in
Speaker 1: the blood. It tends to hang out inside the tissues,
Speaker 1: and so you're not going to catch this with a
Speaker 1: simple blood test. UH. They're now developing diagnostics to find
Speaker 1: these markers that you know, would otherwise go unnoticed. UM.
Speaker 1: But lingering virus is they're not really sure what it's doing.
Speaker 1: It might not be doing anything, but it all might
Speaker 1: also be injuring tissues directly or leaking virus proteins into
Speaker 1: the blood stream which go on to activate the immune system,
Speaker 1: or they might be triggering the information in the brain
Speaker 1: by traveling up the vegas r of So scientists are
Speaker 1: trying to tease out all these different different drivers, and
Speaker 1: what complicates the matter is they're probably all interconnected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I was just gonna say. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: kind of related. Right. If the virus is lingering and
Speaker 1: the immune system is constantly picking up signs of it
Speaker 1: and you know, throwing anybodies at it, throwing stuff attitude,
Speaker 1: at least address what it's sensing, you know, it's gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna keep the immune system in that constant state
Speaker 1: of flux um. Tiny blood clots are also in this
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of fuels that immune system reaction to.
Speaker 1: That's another one that they think could make the things persist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The blood clots are super interesting. So they're seen in
Speaker 1: patients with both acute COVID and in patients with long
Speaker 1: COVID and UM. What scientists in South Africa are finding
Speaker 1: is that inside these clots, like these clots are really
Speaker 1: resistant to breaking down, and normally the body is able
Speaker 1: to do that. But the scientists ask why aren't these
Speaker 1: clots getting digested, and it's because inside them, hidden inside
Speaker 1: are these inflammatory molecules that are sort of preventing this
Speaker 1: digestion and they may also be triggering the immune system
Speaker 1: to react. So, you know, by blowing up these blood
Speaker 1: clots to see what's inside, scientists are getting a better
Speaker 1: idea of what what is causing them to stick around.
Speaker 1: And so these are the kind of the two leading
Speaker 1: theories right it's the immune system and the lingering virus.
Speaker 1: But they've kind of also identified, I guess, for other
Speaker 1: criteria that that people might have that could make them
Speaker 1: uh suffer from long COVID. And it's kind of some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we've heard about before, some of
Speaker 1: the comorbidities and all that. But basically, if if you
Speaker 1: had high levels of the virus in your blood when
Speaker 1: you were infected, that can lead to long COVID. You
Speaker 1: have type two diabetes, unfortunately, that could lead to it.
Speaker 1: Epstein bar virus, which I guess of the population has
Speaker 1: it lays dormant in the body. If that gets reactivated,
Speaker 1: that can make it happen. And then these auto antibodies,
Speaker 1: which kind of talk about things that are just attacking
Speaker 1: your own cells. So these other four factors could contribute
Speaker 1: to that as well. Yeah, the recent research and if
Speaker 1: this is really early research, so it's not really a
Speaker 1: diagnostic yet, but they think these factors might put certain
Speaker 1: people at higher risk from long COVID and they will,
Speaker 1: you know, possibly be a thing to look out for
Speaker 1: as scientists try to predict who's most at risk when
Speaker 1: they're in the early stages of an infection. The good
Speaker 1: thing about this, though, is that while they're doing this research,
Speaker 1: while they're looking to see what the root causes are,
Speaker 1: a lot of the scientists and researchers are focusing a
Speaker 1: lot on the treatment of the symptoms, and you know,
Speaker 1: they feel at least pretty good that they'll have something
Speaker 1: that will kind of address some of it, at least
Speaker 1: to make the symptoms not as as worse. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a one scientist here in New York, David Petrino,
Speaker 1: who his background is in rehab therapy, and he's finding
Speaker 1: that some rehab techniques can help people with a lot
Speaker 1: of the symptoms of lung covide a. Lot of the
Speaker 1: common ones are like breathing issues or you know, because
Speaker 1: the body isn't you know, at it working at its best,
Speaker 1: you know, problems with physical movement. And there's you know,
Speaker 1: a very slow and patient coaching that can help them
Speaker 1: recover their breathing, recover their movements. Um, and that's that's
Speaker 1: proving to be quite promising, but it doesn't cover all
Speaker 1: the symptoms. And so you know, as I talked about before,
Speaker 1: there are different subsets of the condition that you know
Speaker 1: will probably require different types of treatment. You know. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, there are also scientists working on you know,
Speaker 1: looking at different drugs that might be able to to
Speaker 1: deal with the symptoms or to deal with the blood clots,
Speaker 1: and these are all in development. But two to really
Speaker 1: get them, you know, get these treatments out into the
Speaker 1: world and helping patients, we all need to have clinical trials,
Speaker 1: which are expensive, and I think hunting is a problem
Speaker 1: with a lot of long COVID research. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: just to kind of illustrate how difficult this is and
Speaker 1: the range of symptoms, right, So the symptoms that people
Speaker 1: report that have long COVID, there's more than two hundred
Speaker 1: across ten groups of different organ systems. So that's just
Speaker 1: a lot of variables really, but I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: about because it was interesting. Also, they noticed that in
Speaker 1: people that had long COVID, it kind of didn't matter
Speaker 1: if you were severely infected. People that had milder symptoms
Speaker 1: still could come down with it, right, It could come
Speaker 1: back at you months later. And you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of figures into the conversation that we're having with the
Speaker 1: O Macron variant, where we are seeing a lot more
Speaker 1: milder cases, but they still don't know. It's just too
Speaker 1: early to tell if even the O Macron variant cans
Speaker 1: for some of this long COVID. Yeah, they're really not
Speaker 1: sure yet. You know, I think there it is seeming
Speaker 1: more likely that if you have really severe disease that
Speaker 1: you'll be more likely to u end up with long COVID.
Speaker 1: But again, as you said, people who have been asymptomatic
Speaker 1: or had really mild cases also end up with long COVID,
Speaker 1: So they don't know. And with O Macron, you know,
Speaker 1: it's too early to tell. O Macron has only been
Speaker 1: around for two months, so nobody's really reporting quote unquote
Speaker 1: long COVID symptoms yet, which happened after three months. Um,
Speaker 1: but what all of the research I suppoke to told
Speaker 1: me is that regardless of whether O macron causes you know,
Speaker 1: a lower rate of long COVID, and the fact that
Speaker 1: there's so many people with O macron, you know, means
Speaker 1: that even a small proportion of those people will still
Speaker 1: be a big number. It's kind of that unfortunate lottery, right,
Speaker 1: there's just so many numbers that are happening, you know,
Speaker 1: it could unfortunately befall you. So just interesting. Look, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, this has kind of been one of the
Speaker 1: biggest mysteries since the start of the pandemic, these ongoing
Speaker 1: lingering symptoms. They're starting to nail it down, but still
Speaker 1: a long way to go before we figured out exactly
Speaker 1: what's happening. Yasmin Tayag, contributor to Vox, Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oxpard Ramirez and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. You don't forget the effort
Speaker 1: today's big news stories. You can check me out on
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