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Researchers in London have identified a potential culprit for the long-term symptoms of COVID, using lung images to analyze microscopic abnormalities that can cause long-term effects.
Olympic gold medalist, bobsledder Alex Kopach of London was one of the patients who took part in a study led by researchers at Western University for long-term COVID, a term used to describe patients who did not fully recover weeks and months after being infected with COVID-19. Digger was on oxygen for almost two months after having COVID-19 in 2021 (Photo courtesy of Alex Kopacz) Photo by Alex Kopacz
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Researchers in London have identified a potential culprit for the long-term symptoms of COVID, using lung images to analyze microscopic abnormalities that can cause long-term effects.
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The study, led by Western University, which includes five medical centers in Ontario, used functional xenon inhaled MRI images to examine the lungs of patients with long-term COVID symptoms, including brain fog, shortness of breath and fatigue.
The researchers found small changes affecting the way oxygen moves from the small air sacs of the lungs, called alveoli, to red blood cells, abnormalities that do not show up in traditional tests.
“It’s a mystery to know what to do to patients when they have symptoms, but lung function tests are normal, their CT scans and chest x-rays are normal. You can’t cure something you can’t find, “said Western Professor Grace Paraga on Tuesday.
“Having found the anomaly in all these patients, we now know what to do. . . and what to follow over time as their symptoms develop. “
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Study participants inhaled the polarized xenon inside the MRI, giving researchers a real-time snapshot of how hundreds of millions of lung alveoli function. Lung structures about one-fifth of a millimeter in diameter are crucial for getting oxygen into the blood.
“In these patients. . . “The blood vessels in the lungs are either truncated, or stunted, or maybe blocked,” Paraga said. “There may be some residual, microscopic clots that you can’t see with any other method.”
The researchers studied 34 patients with suspected long-term COVID employed by the London Health Science Center’s COVID-19 emergency clinic and the St. Louis program. Joseph’s Health Care in London after acute COVID-19. The results were compared with a control group of six healthy patients.
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All participants became infected with COVID during the first few waves of the pandemic – before vaccines became widely available – not during this year’s fifth wave, powered by Omicron, Paraga said.
Participants had shortness of breath more than six weeks after infection, and some were still symptomatic after 35 weeks.
One of the participants was Alex Kopach, a gold medalist at the London Bobsleigh Olympics, who publicly announced his hospitalization at COVID and his prolonged symptoms in May 2021.
“I was on oxygen for almost two months after COVID and it took me almost three months to get to a place where I could walk without breathing air,” Kopach said in a statement on Tuesday. “. . . We must remember that this virus can have very serious long-term consequences that are not trivial. “
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While many patients recover from COVID without lasting symptoms, some report prolonged problems such as chronic cough, joint pain, shortness of breath, muscle aches, intense fatigue, or brain fog.
The Western team found that the microscopic lung abnormality did not appear to be worse in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who recovered at home, said Michael Nicholson, a St. Paul’s respirator.
“This helps open the door for further research into some of the anomalies we have found by looking at the mechanism for why this is happening,” he said on Tuesday.
The study, the largest MRI study of long-term patients with COVID to date, was published Tuesday in the medical journal Radiology.
The study was done through a partnership of researchers from LHSC, St. Joseph’s, Thunder Bay’s Lakehead University, Hamilton’s McMaster University, Toronto Metropolitan University and Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital.
The team plans an updated follow-up study of the participants one year after their initial evaluation.
jbieman@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JenatLFPress
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