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Loss of smell. Fatigue. Mental health challenges. Difficulty breathing and other lower respiratory diseases. Fluid and electrolyte disorders. Cardiac dysrhythmia and other nonspecific chest pains. Trouble with urination. Diabetes?
Statistically, these are the conditions that defined post-acute SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) infection, or long COVID, for 28,118 people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by PCR before the Omicron wave. The data, presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections 2022, can be used to guide diagnoses of long COVID, and may be the guide soon at Kaiser Permanente offices, said Michael Horberg, MD, executive director of research, community benefit, and Medicaid strategy at the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Research Institute, in an interview with Medscape Medical News.
"There are some real conditions you could ask about" if you were evaluating a patient who believes they have PASC, Horberg said. "And there are real conditions that are symptoms patients have but they don't fit the PASC diagnosis."
That list is likely to evolve as specific symptoms emerge with new variants, he said. And there's also the nationwide Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) trial being conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
