News & Views: SARS-Cov-2 Is Not the Only Virus to Cause Lingering Effects
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Vaccine Update for Healthcare ProvidersPublished on
Vaccine Update for Healthcare ProvidersLong COVID has been an ongoing issue related to SARS-CoV-2 infections. Following an infection, many people have reported experiencing lingering symptoms. The symptoms affect a variety of organs and can last for many months or even more than a year. Scientists and clinicians continue to work to understand why this happens, to whom, and how to treat the effects. The lingering, sometimes life-changing, symptoms have been one of the scarier aspects of COVID-19.
But many people don’t realize that other viral — and some bacterial — infections can also cause lingering effects. Indeed, lingering effects are so common as to have been generally categorized as “post-acute infection syndrome,” and sometimes more specifically, such as post-polio syndrome, post-Ebola syndrome, Q fever fatigue syndrome, sub-acute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), post-dengue fatigue syndrome, post-chikungunya chronic inflammatory rheumatism, rheumatic fever, and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. Further, conditions that cause a similar series of manifestations, but for which a consistent cause remains elusive, have also been attributed to previous viral infection, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
Lingering effects have been described following numerous viral infections, including some coronaviruses, adenoviruses, herpesviruses, enteroviruses, paramyxoviruses, and orthomyxoviruses. Bacterial infections caused by pneumococcus, Coxiella burnetii, Borrelia, and Giardia lamblia have also been associated with long-term effects.
For example,
The causes of lingering effects may differ among pathogens, and in some cases, may overlap within a class of pathogen, but in many cases remain only partly understood. Causes may include:
As we relate what we know about other infections to long COVID, three important considerations emerge:
For a review of the current understanding of long COVID, including limitations of the current research and areas for further study, check out this recent article in Nature Reviews Microbiology by Hannah E. Davis and colleagues.
Contributed by: Charlotte A. Moser, MS, Paul A. Offit, MD
Categories: Vaccine Update January 2023, News and Views About Vaccines
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