UC San Francisco scientists have found that SARS-CoV-2 can linger in the body for years and could be driving a global epidemic in long COVID.
They're also exploring the surprising long-term risks of getting COVID in pregnancy.
Assistant Professor of Medicine Michael Peluso, MD, heads UCSF's LIINC program, short for "Long-term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus," a university-wide effort to understand one of COVID-19's most enduring challenges. Peluso and Professor of Pediatrics Valerie Flaherman, MD, MPH, lead components of the National Institutes of Health's long COVID consortium, RECOVER - or Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery.
Peluso and Flaherman tell us what we know about long COVID - and what we don't.
What is long COVID?
Peluso: There's not a single picture of long COVID, and that's one reason it's been challenging to study.
Still, when clinicians or researchers talk about long COVID, they're referring to medically unexplained symptoms that persist for months or years after somebody's had COVID.
We don't know what causes it, why this happens to some people and not others, or how to get people feeling better, which is what we spend most of our time trying to figure out.
