August 24, 2023 – Some cases of Long COVID-19 may go undetected since the patient’s initial infection was not recognized.
This is the results of a small, recent study conducted in Neurology, neuroimmunology and neuroinflammation.
About 103 million Americans have had COVID-19, and a couple of third of them resulted in Long COVID, Statistical news reported. The condition can vary in severity and could be debilitating.
The recent study examined only 29 patients. “But it provides unique insights into the number of cases of long Covid that may be undetected because the patient's Covid-19 infection was not recognized,” Stat News wrote.
“We estimate that in the first year of the pandemic in the United States, there were about 10 million people who found themselves in this predicament: who got Covid, got Long Covid, but tested negative for Covid,” said Igor Koralnik, who led the study and is chief of the Division of Neuroinfectious Diseases and Global Neurology at Northwestern Medicine.
The study suggests that a positive COVID-19 diagnosis mustn't be required to receive treatment for individuals with long-COVID symptoms, said Ziyad Al-Aly MD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved within the study.
Some people live in areas where testing will not be widely available or produce other problems accessing testing, he said.
“Restricting access to care [for] “Transmission of Long Covid to people who already have chronic disease will disempower and marginalize those who are likely to be among the most vulnerable among us,” Al-Aly said.
These so-called “long-term negative patients” needs to be included in studies and research on Long COVID, Koralnik said. However, this will not be currently the case.