2023-11-30 01:05:45
The cold season is in full swing: the number of patients with Covid, influenza, and ARVI is growing. And everything seems to be as usual for the pre-winter season, but many say that they got sick in September-October, but the cough still does not go away. Rossiyskaya Gazeta looked into the situation.
The stories patients tell have many similarities. At first, everything is like a common cold: a slight increase in temperature, runny nose, weakness, sometimes a sore throat and loss of voice. But then a cough appears – and in this state the person is “stuck” for many weeks. It seems that general health has already improved (although those who have recovered from the disease complain that it takes much longer to recover than usual), but nothing can relieve the residual cough.
Whole families get sick – children bring the “infection” from kindergarten or school and infect their parents. Everyone coughs in turn and together.
Covid tests are quite accessible today – it’s easy to buy them and perform the test yourself or take a smear in a private laboratory. However, patients with prolonged acute respiratory infections often say that the test results for both influenza and covid were negative. In addition, the infection is not similar to the flu – everyone knows that it begins very abruptly, the temperature can rise to 39 degrees in just a couple of hours. In the morning you were healthy, but by lunchtime you collapsed and lay flat. So many suspect that they have “picked up” some new “nasty”.
Our country is not the only one where such “long” infections are reported. According to WHO estimates, the symptoms of the disease began to persist not only during the protracted course of Covid (long COVID), but also following “ordinary” ARVI – in 20% of those who recovered. There was even a new term – long colds – “long cold”.
A month ago, the journal Clinical-Medicine published the results of the work of scientists at Queen Mary University of London. They conducted a survey of 10 thousand patients who had been diagnosed with Covid or another respiratory infection. Both post-Covid patients and patients with common ARVI continued to complain regarding asthenia, aching joints, and a long cough following exiting the acute phase of the disease.
If you have a persistent cough, you should get tested for whooping cough and mycoplasma.
“There is no evidence that the “strange” disease that is being complained regarding both in Russia and abroad is caused by some new virus,” says Alexander Gorelov, deputy director for scientific work at the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – Hints on this topic that flash in the press are unfounded – at least until a new pathogen is discovered. But work to monitor circulating pathogens is ongoing. If it really was some kind of previously unknown virus, it would have become known. Rather, we can talk regarding the simultaneous circulation of several respiratory infections at once – in addition to influenza and Covid, this is also respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), mycoplasma and others. It is no coincidence that people are now talking regarding a “tridemic”.
And the atypical course of a cold and long recovery may be associated with a decrease in immunity. Covid, scientists have found, provides an “immune hole” for 6-8 months or longer.
What to do?
1. To prevent the disease from protracting, it must be treated correctly. And for this it is important to do a test at the very beginning to identify the pathogen. Today it is not difficult – tests for influenza and Covid are performed in clinics, such diagnostics must be carried out necessarily, because the symptoms of these diseases are now similar, but the treatment is different – there are effective antiviral drugs for influenza, but for coronavirus infection they are treated with other medications.
2. If you have a persistent cough, you should undergo further examination. This picture can occur, for example, with mycoplasma pneumonia or whooping cough. There are also many cases of both diseases today. Often, with a prolonged cough, the patient is sent to an allergist-immunologist and diagnosed with bronchial asthma. “But it would be better to check first to see if there is whooping cough or mycoplasma,” advises Gorelov.
3. Another reason for a protracted illness is that the patient may get a “mix” of several infections. Let us remind you that now there is a high probability of becoming infected with Covid, influenza, and the same mycoplasma, RSV and whooping cough – even higher than in previous seasons.
Mycoplasma is a mycobacterium that belongs to the same genus as the causative agent of tuberculosis. These are different diseases, but they have something in common: for example, the ability to penetrate cells and remain there in a hidden “sleeping” form. The BCG vaccination ( once morest tuberculosis), which we should receive in childhood, provides cross-immunity to mycoplasma. That is, this vaccine can also be used to prevent mycoplasma pneumonia. True, the effect following vaccination lasts for three years, and then the specific immunity weakens.
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