For millions of people living with long COVID, symptoms like shortness of breath, mental fog, and deep fatigue continue long after infection, with no clear explanation. Now, a group of leading microbiologists believes they may have identified an overlooked factor that could help explain why recovery stalls for so many.
Rather than blaming lingering symptoms on SARS-CoV-2 alone, the researchers suggest that other infections present in the body may play a critical role in some long COVID cases.
A review published in eLife by 17 scientists, including experts from Rutgers Health, argues that infections acquired before or during COVID could contribute to symptoms that persist for months or even years.
“This is an aspect of long COVID that is not talked about a lot,” said Maria Laura Gennaro, a microbiologist at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School who chaired the Microbiology Task Force for the National Institutes of Health’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery initiative, a large-scale study of long COVID.
Why Long COVID Remains So Hard to Treat
Long COVID has affected as many as 400 million people worldwide. Symptoms range from relatively mild disruptions to severe and disabling conditions that affect the brain, heart, lungs, and digestive system. Despite the scale of the problem, doctors still lack proven treatments because the biological drivers behind long COVID remain uncertain.
The new review pulls together existing studies and expert analysis to highlight a possibility that has received little focus so far. Infections other than the coronavirus itself may be essential contributors to ongoing symptoms.
