Some people complain of symptoms such as coughing, fatigue, and shortness of breath, even though they have recovered from COVID-19. A new finding reveals prolonged shortness of breath can be dangerous.
According to the findings, prolonged shortness of breath is one of the persistent complications associated with lung damage. Shortness of breath is widely reported during the acute phase of COVID-19 infection, but this symptom may be long-lasting.
To find out, researchers studied scans and samples of fluid from the patient’s lungs. They involved 38 patients who contracted COVID-19 for 3 days 6 months, and 29 healthy volunteers.
This study focused on determining which immune cells are active in the lungs to determine the cause of shortness of breath after infection.
In that study, the patients showed mixed results. The team noted that all of the COVID-19 patients developed severe infections, requiring hospitalization.
Causes of Continuous Shortness of Breath
The new findings, published in the medical journal Immunity, reveal the causes of persistent shortness of breath. It was found that the long-term activity of immune cells in the airways may be the main cause of this complication of COVID-19.
“Our study found that months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, there were still abnormal immune cells in the airways of patients with persistent shortness of breath,” said study co-senior author Dr James Harker of the Heart Institute. and the Imperial National Lung, quoted from Express UK, Friday (11/3/2022).
“We also identified protein signatures in the lung that suggest ongoing injury to the airways.”
Researchers studied COVID-19 patients who experienced persistent shortness of breath. They observed altered immune cells in the patients’ airways.
The results suggest that signs of ongoing lung damage may improve over time.
“These findings suggest that persistent shortness of breath in our cohort of COVID-19 patients is due to a failure to turn off the immune response, leading to airway inflammation and injury,” said senior author Professor Pallav Shah, of the Imperial National Heart & Lung Institute. .
“The next step of our study is to see if there are treatments that can reduce immune activity, and whether they help reduce the persistent shortness of breath that some patients experience.”
Even so, the researchers emphasized these findings should be studied further. Because, this study could not determine whether any patients had signs before infection occurred.
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