How researchers track Long COVID’s impacts

An interesting question from a reader got me thinking about how, exactly, we track the impacts of Long COVID. Doctors, researchers, and long-haulers themselves have learned a lot about the condition over the last three years. We still don’t have clear estimates of exactly how many people in the U.S. are dealing with this chronic disease, but we’ve come much closer to understanding its impacts than we were when patients first began advocating for themselves in 2020.

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New study demonstrates potential for measuring breakthrough risk

Adults with substance use disorders have an increased risk of breakthrough cases, according to a new study published this week in the journal World Psychiatry. Though the chances of a COVID-19 case after vaccination were very low in this group, these patients’ odds of a breakthrough case were about twice as high as the odds for adults without substance use disorders, researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found.

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12 Long COVID stats that demonstrate the importance of vaccination

Though it’s now been well over a year since the first Long COVID patients were infected, there is still so much we don’t know about the condition. For example, we don’t know a very rudimentary number: how many people in the U.S. are struggling with Long COVID. We also don’t have a clear, detailed picture of Long COVID symptoms, or how these symptoms arise from a coronavirus infection, or how they impact the daily lives of Long COVID patients.

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