2024-01-11 10:01:00
Associated with the flu and RSV of the winter, the coronavirus, which caused a first official death just four years ago, on January 11, 2020, is not a trivial virus for the two million French people who suffer of a long Covid. At the Parc clinic, in Castelnau le Lez, Jérôme Larché, specialist in internal medicine, one of the whistleblowers on the disease, sees around ten new patients arrive every week.
“What we still lack is treatment.” Doctor Jérôme Larché, specialist in internal medicine, is convinced that “the year 2024 will provide elements of an answer”, perhaps with this study “on monoclonal antibodies which stimulate the immune system”, underway in Geneva. “We don’t have a solution yet. I don’t tell patients that I’m going to cure them, but that I’m going to try to get their heads out of the water.” Those from the beginning of the followingnoon, Tuesday January 9, live in the United States, carpooled from Toulouse, came as neighbors.
Since he resumed his consultations, at the Parc clinic, in Castelnau-le-Lez, Dr Larché, whistleblower on the disease, commissioned by theOccitanie regional health agency to organize a network of the territory in long Covid referral and coordination centers designed two years ago, receives “10 to 15 new patients per week”. The pace has not slowed since the doctor opened the first dedicated consultation in France, on April 30, 2021, at the Clémentville clinic. Sixteen months earlier, on January 11, 2020, four years ago, the first death from Covid was officially announced in China.
We quickly had to face the following-effects, knowing that “no variant allows us to escape long Covid, even if the risk has decreased with Omicron”.
“What do you think regarding vagus nerve stimulation?”
“Lives stopped or turned upside down” now number in the hundreds of thousands, and Jérôme Larché is convinced that “the cases are probably underdiagnosed, particularly among the elderly”.
Young, active, Françoise (1) is the image of an illness sometimes described as that of young adults. A textbook case, with a plethora of medical courses, scanners, MRIs, certificates… and a stint in a specialized unit, today a diary full of speech therapy sessions, physiotherapy, osteopathy, transcranial magnetic stimulation…
Questions and answers arise, often the same: stimulation of the vagus nerve, what do you think? And a daily intake of oxygen? And… ? “There is no guaranteed effect and it is not miraculous,” the doctor often tempers. “You shouldn’t have fun being sorcerers’ apprentices,” he often adds.
The recurring advice: do not exhaust yourself in exercise retraining. “You have to take it slowly and gradually. It’s not a problem of muscle but of cells.”
A prescription that expires and the fear of not being able to renew it is a source of anxiety. Non-recognition of long-term illness (ALD) due to ignorance of procedures, a factor of insecurity. A persistent disabling symptom opens a chasm or creates a mountain.
“We will have tried and just for that, it will be different”
Françoise arrived with an enormous medical file, that of the examinations necessary to avoid all traces of other illnesses, essential as long as we “do not have a positive diagnostic marker”. She is willing to do more to get better. What ? “I struggle, I spend my life in meetings, I have seen that there are lots of things but I am lost”, cowardly, with an energy tinged with weariness, this executive yesterday at ease in her position as manager, tireless worker experienced in “multitasking”.
She would like to return to part-time therapeutic work soon. She has been on sick leave since she had Covid on January 14, 2022. She leaves with new prescriptions, “it doesn’t seem like much but I have something, we will have tried, and just for that, it will be different “.
What we know regarding long Covid
Investigations follow one another on long Covid, a reality that is increasingly documented today: researchers from the University Medical Center of Amsterdam have just published in the scientific journal Nature Communication, on January 4, a study which opens up avenues of understanding of the persistent fatigue of people suffering from the pathology: the mitochondria, the “engines” of muscle cells, produce less energy in them.
Fatigue or rather “exhaustion”, prefers Dr Larché, shortness of breath, stomach aches, dizziness, digestive disorders, eye and skin problems… long Covid, thus defined when people suffer from disorders over time, from three months following infection, is associated with a long list of symptoms. Occitanie was a pioneer in care, and set up a territorial network to detect, support, and best treat the effects of a disease which remains unknown and which affected, a year ago, two million French people, according to an estimate from Public Health France, “several hundred thousand have a severe form”, explains Jérôme Larché, who participated in the first international congress on long Covid, organized from December 7 to 9 in Madrid.
“We are no longer in the debate which still prevailed a year ago on the reality or not of long Covid”, welcomes Jérôme Larché. The very official National Academy of Medicine has just issued a report which highlights the “polymorphous and sometimes confusing” expression of the disease and its “impact on the central nervous system”.
It was planned that “the pioneering work carried out in Occitanie would spread to the national level”, recalls the doctor. It will be “when political events permit”.
(1) The first name has been changed.
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