Patients and physicians struggling to officially diagnose long COVID may be one step closer to an answer, thanks to new research from a team of Canadian scientists.
The researchers at Lawson Health Research Institute have discovered patients with post-COVID-19 condition, known as long COVID, have unique signs in their blood that show rapid changes in their blood vessels. Read more: Canadians with long COVID: Sick and, increasingly, worried they’ll go broke These signs, or biomarkers, are a tell-tale indication that a patient has long COVID — a finding that could help to develop concrete diagnosis methods for an illness that remains largely a mystery to physicians and scientists, says Dr.
Doug Fraser, a Lawson scientist who has been studying long COVID since 2020. He is also a critical care physician at London Health Sciences Centre. “There’s always been confusion in terms of what’s underlying long COVID and in fact, some people have even suggested that maybe it’s psychosomatic or it’s not a real medical issue,” he said.
Patients with long COVID can experience a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, cognitive issues, shortness of breath and gastrointestinal problems.