As the world faces a possible seasonal increase in coronavirus cases, medical experts are still pondering the long-standing cause of COVID.
The mysterious disease causes various symptoms long after the COVID-19 infection has disappeared, such as fatigue, loss of sexual desire, loss of smell and taste, chest pain and chronic cough.
Scientists don’t know for sure what causes prolonged COVID, a term for about 200 symptoms that vary widely.
But researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have suggested that reduced levels of serotonin – a neurotransmitter that affects mood, memory, sleep, digestion, blood clotting and sexual desire – may explain the lingering symptoms.
Between 10% and 30% of people are estimated to develop some form of COVID long after recovering from a coronavirus infection, a risk that has declined somewhat since the beginning of the pandemic.
To investigate the role that serotonin may play, researchers analyzed the blood of 58 patients who had long had COVID up to 22 months since their infection.
Chronic COVID symptoms can include fatigue, loss of sexual desire, loss of smell and taste, chest pain and chronic cough.Georgii – stock.adobe.com
The results were compared with 30 people without post-Covid symptoms and 60 patients who were in the early stages of coronavirus infection.
Their analysis revealed that serotonin levels were altered immediately after the coronavirus infection, something that also happens after other viral infections. But in people with long-standing COVID, serotonin is the only molecule that doesn’t recover to pre-infection levels.
Lower serotonin levels disrupt the vagus nervous system, which sends signals between the body and the brain.
Serotonin plays a role in short-term memory, and researchers suggest that reduced serotonin may cause memory problems and other cognitive issues that plague people with long-term COVID.
“Although not everyone has difficulties in the serotonin pathway, at least a subset may respond to therapies that activate this pathway,” Dr. Christoph Thaiss, lead author of the study and assistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times. .
Low levels of serotonin – shown here in the gastrointestinal tract – may explain some of the long-standing symptoms of COVID.Semantic Scholar
If low serotonin levels are to blame for prolonged COVID, some researchers hope increasing those levels could help.
“If we add serotonin or prevent the degradation of serotonin, maybe we can restore some of the vagal signals and improve memory and cognition,” said Dr. Maayan Levy, lead author and assistant professor of microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine.
To this end, Levy and Thaiss planned a clinical trial to test fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) branded as Prozac. The trial will join other trials underway to solve the long-running mystery of COVID.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
