New Delhi: Jem Chronic covid A burden for health care providers globally, researchers now report that a blood test taken at the time of Covid-19 infection can predict who is likely to have long-term Covid.
A study by a team from University College London in the UK, published in Lancet eBiomedicine, analyzed proteins in the blood of healthcare workers infected with SARS-CoV-2, compared with samples from healthcare workers who were not infected.
Normally the protein levels in the body are stable, but they found dramatic differences in the levels of some proteins up to six weeks after infection, indicating disruption of a number of important biological processes.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, they identified “signatures” in the abundance of different proteins that successfully predicted whether a person would report persistent symptoms a year after infection.
If these findings are replicated in a larger, independent cohort of patients, a test could potentially be offered along with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test that could predict people’s likelihood of developing covid over a long period of time.
“Studies show that even mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 disrupts the protein profile in our blood plasma. This means that even mild Covid-19 dramatically affects normal biological processes, for at least six weeks after infection,” said . Lead author Dr Gabby Capture.
A tool predicting prolonged covid needs to be validated in an independent, larger cohort of patients.
“However, using our approach, a test that predicts prolonged covid at the time of initial infection can be rapidly and cost-effectively rolled out,” Kaptur added.
According to a recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan, more than 40 percent, or more than 100 million, of Covid-19 survivors worldwide have or have long-term effects after recovery.
For the UK study, researchers analyzed blood plasma samples from 54 healthcare workers who had a PCR- or antibody-confirmed infection, taken weekly for six weeks in spring 2020, compared with samples taken from 102 healthcare workers during the same period. was done with. Transmitted
The researchers found abnormally high levels of 12 of the 91 proteins studied in people infected by SARS-CoV-2 and the degree of abnormality correlated with the severity of symptoms.
A machine learning algorithm, trained on the participants’ protein profiles, was able to distinguish all 11 healthcare workers who reported at least one persistent symptom at one year from infected healthcare workers who did not report persistent symptoms after one year.
“If we can identify people who are more likely to have prolonged covid, that opens the door to trialing treatments like antivirals at an earlier, early infection stage, to see if that can reduce the risk of later prolonged covid,” said Senior. Author Dr. Wendy Haywood.
