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Four weeks after San Diego, pediatric nurse Jennifer Minhas, Tomba sickCOVID-19 [Feminine Last March, his cough and his fever had been resolved, but new symptoms had emerged: a thoracic pain, high heart rate and overwhelming fatigue. His primary care doctor told him that it was just anxious and none of his other COVID patients had these problems. "It was not what I needed to hear," said Minhas.

Sometimes she was too exhausted to hold her head. "I was a kind of zombie for months and I'm hanging out for incapable of doing a lot of nothing."

The term clinical for the flattening of the minha fatigue described is "post-expensation malaise". It is a common symptom in patients who have not recovered from COVID. It is also compatible with a standard characteristic of another chronic disease: myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, or me / CFS.Read on and ensure your health and health of others, do not miss these Without signs that you have already had coronavirus.

Patients with ME / CFS and long Covid patients also indicate brain fog

Patients with ME / CFS also report a cognitive impairment - "Brain Blank" - and orthostatic intolerance, in which standing standing produce a race heart rate and lightness. Minhas has experienced these symptoms, as well as many other "long lengths", tens of thousands ofpost-coovid Patients who have not retrieved.

The percentage of covidant patients who become long carriers is difficult to pin - partly because many early covidant patients have not been tested in time to detect the virus. But "Long Covid" is potentially a huge problem.A recent study Of 1,733 Coovidant patients from Wuhan, China, found three quarters of them still had symptoms six months after their release from the hospital.

In January, doctors had documented more than 21 million cases of COVID in the United States. "If only 5% develop persistent symptoms" - about 1 million cases - "and if most symptoms have symptoms, we will double the number of Americans suffering from me / CFS over the next two years", professor of School of Medicine Dr.Anthony Komaroff Recently wrote in the letter of Harvard Health.

The cause of ME / CFS is unknown, but several studies have found that it follows acute infections with viruses - all of the 1918 "Spanish" influenza in Ebola. "A certain percentage of people does not recover," saidLeonard Jason, Researcher in Depaul University.

Scientists are trying to understand the mechanisms of the disease and why it develops in some people and not others. According toCenters for Disaster Control and Prevention, ME / CFS shares certain characteristics with autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks healthy tissues in the body. Several studies are underway to explore this and other potential causes.

Doctors who specialize in the treatment of ME / CFS are starting to pivot to long-standing COVID patients. Dr.Peter Rowe, Whose Johns Hopkins clinic is one of the main centers of the country for me, has so far seen four long-term lengths in its practice. "All meet the criteria for me / CFS," he said.

Despite years of research, there is no biomarker for me / CFS, so that blood tests are ineffective as a diagnostic tool. The Rowe approach is to tease the measures that symptoms can have identifiable causes and treatments and address them. An example: a 15 year old boy round for me / CFS was so sick that even standing up a few hours a day was exhausted and practically impossible school work. The boy's heart rate while lying down was 63; When he got up, he arrow at 113. This effect is known as the tachycardia syndrome of postural orthostatic or pots.

Rowe knew interviews with the boy's mother he had an extraordinary appetite for salt. So so he kept a shaker at his bedside and would regularly sprinkle the salt over his hand and lick it.

Rowe hypothesis that this was a sodium retention problem. To counter it, he prescribed the steroids of steroids, which promotes sodium resorption in the kidneys. Three weeks later, the boy had recovered so dramatically that he was helping a neighbor with a landscaping project, pushing rocks in a wheelbarrow. "He was a different child," said Rowe.

Such treatment would not be applicable in a typical case, "said Rowe:" But he points out that the potential of patients to obtain a substantial improvement of their SCF symptoms if we address orthostatic intolerance. "

From the 1980s, many doctors process / CFS prescribed a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and an exercise plan based on adiscredited affirmation nowthat the disease had no biomedical origin. This approach has proved ineffective - patients have often aggravated after pushing beyond their physical limits. He also contributed to a belief in the medical establishment that Me / CFS was everything in your head, a story that haslargely refuted.

"Me / CFS has never been a predominantly behavioral problem, although it was launched like that," said Rowe.

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The answers for all are frightened so far

The answers were slow to arrive, but the attitudes on the disease begin to change. Patient defenders indicate at a 2015Report of the Institute of Medicine This called me "a serious, chronic, complex, complex and systemic illness" and recognized that many doctors are poorly trained to identify and treat it. TheCDC says Up to 90% of the Estimation of 1 million patients with ME / CFS can be undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.

The problem is exacerbated by a reluctance to provide health care coverage to patients whose diseases are not easily diagnosed, saidJoe DIT, medical anthropologist At the University of California-Davis. "Making patients prove that they do not only suffer, but suffering from a documented disease, save money. So, I'm worried about how long Covid carriers will be treated as the numbers increase. " The best treatment in many cases can be resting or a reduced workload ", which results in a form of disability coverage," he said.

But since the long carriers typically ill immediately after having a testable viral infection, they may not be carried away, said Rowe - after all, their illness "begins like a" real "illness".

Long carriers can also help researchers better understand the appearance of the disease because they are studied because their emerging symptoms, while patients with me / CFS are often not perceived before being sick for two years or More, he said.

"There is no doubt that it legitimate in many ways the experience of people with me / CFS who felt they were not thought," said Jason de Depaul.

In July, the profitSolve me / CFS Launched an initiative to understand the similarities between long carriers and patients with ME / CFS. Suppribize + me and subscribed by national health institutes, it includes an application that allows registrants to record their symptoms and effects over time.

These efforts can also reduce the tendency of physicians to ignore the complaints of patients who do not seem to have no obvious cause, "said Lauren Nichols, 32, a long carrier with a long list of miseries - all serious gastrointestinal problems At the shingles of his left eye.

"I was one of those people who falsely believed that if you can not see the disease, psychosomatic," said Nichols, who helps to administerPolitical body, a support group For long-standing patients who have found a common cause with the Me / CFS community.

"Now, I come," she says. "If I have a message for doctors," believe your patients ".As for yourself: go through this pandemic at your healthier, do not miss these35 places you are most likely to catch Covid.

Kn(Kaiser Health News) is a non-profit news service covering health problems. It is an independent KFF editorial program (Kaiser Family Foundation), which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permane.