The Centre for Medical Genomics (CMG) at Ramathibodi Hospital is taking part in an international study examining genes that may be responsible for long Covid in people infected with Covid-19.
Jointly carried out by the CMG and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the project aims to find out more about the genetic factors behind long Covid, one of four factors, said the CMG on its Facebook page.
The findings could shed light on how to better deal with long Covid, which has more than 200 symptoms, said the CMG. Worse still, these long Covid symptoms are found to occur in even healthy adults who have no history of suffering any chronic diseases before Covid-19 struck, it said.
Some of the most common long Covid symptoms are similar to symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), which include muscle pain caused by an inflammation in the brain and spine, said the CMG.
CFS and ME usually take a long time to heal, during which time they affect several systems in the body and can cause the patient to lose the ability to perform day-to-day tasks. In severe cases, patients become bedridden or confined to a wheelchair.
Prior to this research project, the CMG developed a method to analyse the genomes of patients suffering from long Covid, a process that takes between one to two days to finish. The testing is based on long-read whole genome sequencing and mass array genotyping technology.
At present, there is no specific treatment for long Covid, which affects about one-in-three people infected with Covid-19, said the CMG.
The US National Institutes of Health said it will carry out a clinical trial probing long Covid. Codenamed “Recover Initiative”, it will cost US$1 billion (about 37 billion baht) and run from Jan 1 next year. Led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the trial will involve an experiment that will use a protease inhibitor in treating about 1,700 patients aged 18 and over.
The hypothesis is that this type of anti-viral drug is capable of eliminating the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 which remains in the body of an infected patient and will later cause long Covid. If this hypothesis is proven to be true, the method will likely become a new treatment for long Covid.
