Is the long Covid mostly in the head? A study is controversial – sputnik international

Is the long Covid mostly in the head? A study is controversial

Is the long Covid mostly in the head? A study is controversial

Does the long Covid first have psychological springs? A recent study suggests it but arouses the anger of patients as well as many criticisms … 13.11.2021, Sputnik France

2021-11-13T14: 57 + 0100

2021-11-13T14: 57 + 0100

2021-11-13T15: 06 + 0100

covid-19

researchers

virus

study

patients

symptoms

coronavirus sars-cov-2

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The long Covid is characterized by the persistence of symptoms in a patient reached months earlier by the disease, including a mild form. However, these symptoms “could most often be associated with believing to have been infected” by the disease. coronavirus, suggests a study published earlier this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama), one of the world’s leading medical journals. In other words, the long Covid would be mainly psychological, unrelated to the reality of ‘infection with the virus, and therefore with physiological sequelae. The study, coordinated by Cédric Lemogne, head of the psychiatry service of the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, was interested in around 25,000 people followed for months by the authorities French public health authorities to assess multiple effects of Covid.On the one hand, these people answered questionnaires, both to say whether they had been sick and whether they were still feeling symptoms for a long time. close. On the other hand, the reality of their disease was measured by serological tests making it possible to confirm or not an infection a posteriori. “Cognitive mechanisms” The study concludes that most of the symptoms associated with the long Covid are much more related to the fact. to say that they were a former patient rather than to have been tested positively, even if these two situations logically overlap a lot. In patients who complain of lasting symptoms, it is therefore necessary to seek to “identify cognitive and behavioral mechanisms” and take care not to “attribute them in error to an infection with Covid-19”, conclude the authors. Anger immediately rose within the associations of patients suffering from long Covid which accuse the study of denying the reality of their disorder by giving it an essentially psychological explanation. “Dangerous” interpretation This study gives rise to “stigmatizing, dangerous and harmful interpretations for long Covid (s), especially since they are c ontestes and not recognized by the whole of the scientific community and international associations “, judged Thursday November 11 the French association AprèsJ20, also very virulent against an article of the World relaying this publication. And the critics are far from being the only one made patient associations, some of which called for withdrawal from the study. Many researchers have expressed skepticism about the methodology adopted by this study, and this is the main objection against this study. A serological test is more likely to “miss” a past Covid than to report it by mistake, which skews the results. Response of the authors The authors of the study defended themselves, in Le Monde, stressing in particular that their research did show an association between a real infection and a lasting symptom: loss of smell. According to them, this is proof that their method can distinguish which supposed manifestations of long Covid are really linked to an infection. Indeed, this disorder remains very vaguely defined and this controversy also highlights the difficulty of framing research on the There are many symptoms associated with this disorder, including fatigue or shortness of breath, which makes it difficult to determine how much long Covid time covers different realities and, let alone, what may be the cause. In this context, the controversial Jamaican study risks being used “to assert that (the long Covid) is absolutely not a problem”, fears the American doctor F. Perry Wilson, professor at Yale, on the Medscape site But, while also showing himself to be very critical of the study, he warns of a fundamental problem regarding the too vague definition of the long Covid.

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