"Study Finds There Are 4 Subtypes of Long COVID"
#LongCovid #research
Article here: https://www.prevention.com/health/a42433806/long-covid-subtypes-study/
Study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02116-3
@GinnyMooy What I find very strange about this study is that it appears to claim that every patient they looked at only had major Long COVID symptoms from one of the four subtypes they identified. Admittedly, I only scanned the study, I didn't read it carefully, but this seems odd to me. If there are four distinct subtypes of Long COVID, shouldn't it be possible for a patient to suffer from more than one of them at the same time?
@jik That is why I linked the article in Prevention too. Prof. Russo explains that not everyone will fall neatly into a subphenotype (see screenshot). They researchers mention co-existence of subphenotypes, under discussion.
I thought that at first, too, because of the way table 2 sums up the type 1, 2, 3, and 4 into a neat 100%.
Figure 3 lays it out pretty well, though, by showing each outcome and how, for example, cardiac dysrhythmias show up in all 4.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02116-3/figures/3
@BE @GinnyMooy But I think it's more likely that their methodology for analyzing the data inaccurately pigeonholed people into only one of four subphenotypes rather than accounting for the fact that an individual could be in multiple subphenotypes at the same time.
If that's not the case, then it will be remarkable to watch this play out as we learn more.
If I'm understanding what you're saying then I think you're reading more into the info than they're saying. The way I'm seeing it is that each person was put into one group, but that doesn't preclude that person from having multiple other symptoms from other groups. It just seems to mean that group is more likely to share symptoms in those bodily systems.
Look at cardiac and renal(group 1) vs respiratory, sleep and anxiety(group 2). They call "breathing abnormality, throat/chest pain" part of the second group, but it's basically just as prevalent in the first group and is more prevalent in group 1 than a few other things that they attribute to the first group.
Don't overthink it. Endothelial damage does damage to systems of your body and this is an endothelial disease.
@BE @GinnyMooy I don't think I'm "overthinking it" (and that's kind of patronizing) and I think my questions about their methodology are legitimate, but I'll leave it there because I see no reason to keep going around in circles.
By all means. But, you are overthinking it, and that's not patronizing. It's an extremely common occurrence amongst scientists trying to figure things out. You're not saying anything different than they are, you're just trying to go beyond what they're saying and put a greater significance in it than there likely is. Humans are complicated biological systems and blood vessels run through it all.
@BE @GinnyMooy Figure 3 says that people in one subphenotype can have some of the conditions that are dominant in other subphenotype. But that's not the same as fitting into multiple subphenotypes at the same time, which they seem to preclude by virtue of the fact that their %ages add up to exactly 100.
If the study's accurate, then I'd say it's not that there are 4 subphenotypes of Long COVID; rather, there are 4 subphenotypes of *people* which somehow determines how Long COVID impacts them.