Medical breakthrough could help COVID-19 'long haulers'
Over the past year, millions of Americans were infected with the coronavirus.
Many survived and recovered quickly but others felt their symptoms linger on for months afterward.
A medical breakthrough could help COVID-19 long haulers finally get on the road to recovery.
"I get dizzy, I feel like my eyes are going cross-eyed and I start throwing up," Anita Notte said.
Anita Notte is joining a growing group of "long haulers."
"There are weeks that it goes 바카라 게임 웹사이트 I feel like it's going back, I feel like I had it again," Saul Martinez said.
In contrast to chronic acute COVID-19 syndrome which presents itself three weeks after a COVID-19 diagnosis, long haulers continue to see side effects at least 12 weeks after.
Both Anita and Saul have been battling symptoms for more than six months.
"Now more and more people are coming with, especially with fatigue, fatigue is the number one symptom I find," Dr. Aftab Khan said.
Recently the Journal of American Medical Association found about a third of those who saw mild COVID-19 symptoms are now long haulers, the same group of people who may not have gotten tested last year and are now looking for answers.
An antibody test can only confirm COVID-19 while antibodies are still in your system.
That's where the new T cell test comes in. The blood test extracts DNA which is then sequenced through artificial intelligence.
"They are the front line soldiers, they're the first ones to attack COVID-19 or any virus attacking your body and they last for a very long time as a memory cell," Khan said. "It's like doing a forensic test because we find the fingerprints of COVID-19 on T cells which we could not find in antibodies."
Even as science is helping to confirm the origin of some of these symptoms, more questions remain.
"Will their symptoms, these long-term symptoms, be helped with the vaccine?" WESH 2's Sanika Dange asked.
"It's a tough, tough question. We don't know that because vaccine, we've been vaccinating only for last couple months only," Khan said. "I think the studies are going on. They're going on and only time 바카라 게임 웹사이트 in a couple months, we'll find out if symptoms improve from vaccination."