The study has been published in "iScience".Today, millions of people suffer from LCS, which significantly affects their quality of life. However, it is not easy to diagnose and treat due to a lack of understanding of the underlying disease mechanisms. The diagnosis and treatment of LCS is still very difficult, and there is only a little knowledge about the factors causing accompanying symptoms.
According to the study, the team of researchers, led by chemist Christopher Gerner, have now turned their attention to LCS using mass spectrometry-based post-genomic analysis techniques. The strength of these methods lies in the very comprehensive mapping of actual conditions, i.e. the traceability of disease processes taking place in a patient.
In the course of a viral infection, there is normally a very strong activation of the immune system. But in virtually all of the Long COVID patients studied, corresponding markers such as cytokines, acute phase proteins, and eicosanoids, which indicate inflammation, were in fact hardly detectable, the study said.
"All important potential markers for acute inflammatory processes were below the levels of healthy donors or not detectable at all in LCS patients," said study author Christopher Gerner.
Surprisingly, the differences were more pronounced in long COVID patients compared to asymptomatic patients recovering from COVID disease than to healthy controls, the study said.