编者按:近日,首届华夏肺炎大会暨肺炎专病能力提升项目启动会(CAPC 2024)在北京顺利举行。本次大会旨在促进呼吸感染相关健康的学术交流,提高我国肺炎“促防诊控治康”水平。美国圣路易斯退伍军人医疗保健系统临床流行病学中心主任Ziyad Al-Aly教授在会上发表了题为“长新冠多器官功能障碍的关键发现与研究热点(Long Covid: key findings of multiorgan dysfunction, knowledge gaps, and research priorities)”的特邀报告。在接受《感染医线》的采访中,Al-Aly教授分享了他的参会感受,并介绍了长新冠的多系统影响、治疗挑战以及未来的研究方向。
Infectious Disease Frontier: Could you please share your feelings about attending the 1st China Pneumonia Congress (CAPC 2024) and your views on promoting international exchange and cooperation?
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly: Well, this is truly a remarkable event. The first China Pneumonia Congress is held in Beijing in 2024, it is an academic event that brings together multidisciplinary experts from all over China and around the globe. I'm really delighted and honored to be here. The success of the congress is a testament to the excellent efforts made by the organizers in uniting experts from various fields. It represents the best and brightest minds in China coming together with international collaborations to advance the field and promote progress that will improve the health and well-being of patients not only in China, but around the world. So this is a marvelous accomplishment for science in China and for science in the world. I am deeply honored to be here.
Infectious Disease Frontier: Based on current evidence, what are the main organ dysfunctions associated with Long Covid? Which symptoms may require special attention during specific periods?
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly: Long Covid is really a multi-system disorder. It can affect nearly every organ system. Typically, the main characteristics, at least in the population that we see in the US, include fatigue or post-exertional malaise and brain fog or cognitive dysfunction. We worry about these things a lot because they impact people's ability to work, care for their families, and integrate with society. These are the key features that we really worry about a lot: post-exertional malaise, fatigue, and brain fog or cognitive dysfunction in people with Long Covid. The trajectory of recovery for these things really varies. Some people improve with time, and some people, unfortunately, even three or four years after infection, are still having cognitive problems and post-exertional malaise. Long Covid is highly heterogeneous. I tell people that if you've seen one Long Covid patient, you've seen one Long Covid patient – no two patients are the same. It's very heterogeneous. Every person is their own unique phenotype of Long Covid. More than four years into studying it, we have come to better understand it, and I hope we continue to evolve our understanding and find new treatments for Long Covid to help these patients.
Infectious Disease Frontier: The systems and organs involved in Long Covid are very complex. There have been some reports on Long Covid treatment studies, but almost none have been successful. Could you share your views on Long Covid treatment studies?
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly: We need to do more. The world, in the US and elsewhere, is doing quite a bit of work to find treatments for Long Covid, but so far, there is no FDA-approved treatment modality for Long Covid. This really needs to change. It's a call for all scientists and clinicians to work cooperatively to find new ideas, try new treatments, and develop and conduct those trials to test which treatments work and which don't. The only way we learn in medicine whether a treatment works is to do randomized controlled trials. China has done an amazing job in the past with randomized controlled trials. We need to do a lot more specifically in the field of Long Covid to identify therapeutics to help patients.
Infectious Disease Frontier: What are the current gaps in our understanding of Long Covid, and what kind of study issues should we focus on in the future?
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly: We are now learning that there are mechanisms, including viral persistence, immune dysfunction, and microbiome dysbiosis, that drive or are responsible for the clinical manifestations of Long Covid. We need to do a lot more basic science studies and mechanism studies to understand that. We also need to identify new biomarkers, whether proteomics or other omics, or other tools available to us to better diagnose and identify Long Covid. A lot of us got SARS-CoV-2 infection, and most of us are fine, but some aren't. How can we find these people? What are the biomarkers or even a blood test or urine test that can help us identify Long Covid and its different phenotypes? Lastly, we need more randomized trials testing both repurposed drugs and new or novel therapeutics to treat Long Covid. This is a major knowledge gap that needs to be addressed.