- A new study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s RECOVER initiative discovered what people with Long Covid have known since early 2020: common lab tests cannot identify the disease. Published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the paper reports findings from over 10,000 RECOVER participants. The study has been criticized by some researchers and people with Long Covid and related diseases — many who have had “normal” common lab tests for decades — for failing to listen to patient input and prioritize research into promising biomarkers.
- Scientists have likely found the cause of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a life-threatening pediatric autoimmune response that can be triggered by Covid-19. They found a specific protein (SNX8) – resembling a SARS-CoV-2 protein – in a subset of pediatric participants that caused the body to attack itself. “We hope this kind of approach can help break new ground in understanding similar diseases of immune dysregulation that have stumped us for decades, like multiple sclerosis or type 1 diabetes,” one of the study’s authors wrote in a press release.
- A new review in Nature Medicine found that Long Covid has a $1 trillion annual impact on the global economy and that more than 400 million people have the disease around the world. The estimate is conservative and did not account for the added risk of Covid-19 reinfection or the risks that may emerge years or decades after infection, the review’s authors, members of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative* and other leading Long Covid scientists, wrote.
*Editor’s note: The Patient-Led Research Collaborative, like The Sick Times, has received support from the Balvi and Kanro funds. Our newsroom operates independently of financial supporters.
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