So the long COVID study was really a question that came out of, you know, many of the patients who developed complications post-COVID, which were many had pain syndromes or autonomic symptoms, orthostatic symptoms, lightheadedness, dizziness, fatigue with exercise. And one of the major questions that arose was whether there was a peripheral autonomic or sensory neuropathy that was occurring in long COVID that was developed...
So the long COVID study was really a question that came out of, you know, many of the patients who developed complications post-COVID, which were many had pain syndromes or autonomic symptoms, orthostatic symptoms, lightheadedness, dizziness, fatigue with exercise. And one of the major questions that arose was whether there was a peripheral autonomic or sensory neuropathy that was occurring in long COVID that was developed. And so this particular study looked at about 100 patients with long COVID, a matched group that had COVID but fully recovered, and then two smaller subgroups, one with diabetic neuropathy and then one with postural tachycardia syndrome. So these four groups were studied with skin biopsies to really quantify the peripheral sensory and autonomic nerve fibers to see if there’s any evidence of denervation. We also did physical exams and a lot of questionnaires looking at symptom scores. And what we found was actually quite interesting that the skin biopsies themselves showed significant peripheral denervation in diabetic neuropathy. So that was sort of our disease control group, so as expected. But then the long COVID group and the COVID who had fully recovered had no difference in their skin biopsy. So totally identical sensory nerve fiber densities, autonomic nerve fiber densities. So no real difference at all in the pathology, which was a bit surprising because the symptom scores between the groups were radically different. Those with long COVID continued to have severely high symptom scores and really impaired quality of life. And in contrast, the pathology just didn’t show that, which suggests that at least the symptoms can’t be explained by a peripheral sensory or autonomic neuropathy. Now, one of the really interesting findings we had in the study is we were conducting smell testing as well as part of this cohort. And there was a significant amount of anosmia now seen across all groups post-COVID, which was a bit surprising because a lot of the smell testing that links to neurodegenerative disease. So there’s been a big push to do smell testing to look at risk development of Parkinson’s disease, for example. But we now have a number of patients who have impaired smell post-COVID and many years after don’t seem to have fully recovered. So this does suggest that we might actually have to reestablish normative values in the population now that COVID has passed through.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
