- Experts have cited numerous studies showing that people with Covid-19 remain contagious well beyond five days this week in response to the CDC’s guidance change. One large-scale 2022 study in JAMA Network Open assessed the duration of rapid antigen test positivity during the Omicron BA.1 wave. The study concluded that “rapid antigen test positivity remained high 5 days after symptom onset, supporting guidelines requiring a negative test to inform the length of the isolation period.”
- A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people with Long Covid have measurable cognitive and memory impairments equivalent to losing six IQ points, compared to controls. People with “mild” Covid or resolved symptoms were shown to have lost the equivalent of three IQ points, while Covid-19 ICU patients could lose as many as nine IQ points and reinfection led to the equivalent of losing two IQ points, the study found. The authors analyzed data from over 113,000 people who completed an online assessment of their cognitive abilities. The study dovetails with recent research showing “brain fog” may be caused by brain injury and a leaky blood-brain barrier. Read more in The Guardian.
- Iron dysregulation — caused by acute Covid-19 infection — may play a role in Long Covid, a new study in Nature Immunology found. “It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” one of the study’s authors said in a press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.” The dysregulation, among other factors, may lead to inefficient oxygen transport and chronic symptoms of Long Covid.
- A new preprint found that females and males with Long Covid experienced different immune signatures, symptoms, and organ system involvement. Females with Long Covid were also found to suffer from a higher symptom burden and were more likley to experience hair loss, while males were more likely to experience sexual dysfunction. “Testosterone levels could significantly predict not just [Long Covid] status but also symptom burden and organ system involvement in individuals with [Long Covid] irrespective of sex,” co-author Akiko Iwasaki wrote in a Twitter thread about the study.
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