UCSF: Solving long COVID: How decades of HIV research paved the way

University of California San Francisco (UCSF) review

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, University of California San Francisco researchers were already seeing signs of lingering symptoms in some who had been infected. Importantly, this was when experts still viewed the illness as a transient respiratory virus and before long COVID even had a name, let alone a diagnosis.

Clinicians were hearing young, previously healthy people with no other medical problems talk about how they couldn’t shake the virus. They had bone-crushing fatigue, respiratory issues that wouldn’t go away, difficulty thinking, dizziness, and other problems that persisted well after the acute phase of the disease was over.

Many were in the prime of life but could no longer perform their jobs or function normally. Some had incapacitating symptoms and couldn’t sit upright for long periods of time or needed assistive devices to help them get around. A significant number faced skepticism from health care providers, and even their families and friends. Their symptoms were dismissed as anxiety or otherwise not taken seriously. But, at UCSF, clinicians and researchers took action and did so at a speed unmatched by any other institution.

They were able to quickly tap into decades of expertise and infrastructure built to study another complex virus, HIV. They used that advantage to pivot to COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and what eventually came to be known as long COVID.

Read the full review here.