COVID alters your blood cells, making it harder for oxygen to travel around the body, scientists have claimed.
The new research could explain why many people are now suffering with long Covid – months after first contracting coronavirus.
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Scientists have claimed that symptoms long hauler symptoms such as headache and fatigue are caused by a lack of oxygen and nutrients flowing around the body
A study, based on 55 people found that disruption to oxygen flow is the root of the majority of symptoms that long haulers face.
Long Covid is a condition is which people are left with lasting symptoms such as tiredness, fatigue and headaches.
The researchers looked at patients who had been diagnosed with Covid and found that the virus had altered the stiffness of red and white blood cells.
This is turn made it harder for nutrients to process and for patients to get oxygen.
Writing in the Biophysical Journal, the experts from Max Planck Center for Physics and Medicine in Germany said: “While some of these changes recovered to normal values after hospitalisation, others persisted for
14 months after hospital discharge, evidencing the long-term imprint of Covid-19 on the body.”
To gather their results, the experts examined blood cells from 17 patients who had been acutely ill with Covid between the ages of 41 and 87.
They also looked at data from 14 people aged 27 to 76 who recovered from Covid and from 24 people who were classed as healthy, between the ages of 26-81.
They measured the shape and sizes of their white and red blood cells.
The experts found that the red blood cells were of different shapes and sizes in Covid patients and that it is these abnormalities which is making it hard for oxygen to be carried in the blood.
In their paper they stated that “persistent alterations could be connected with long term symptoms”.
They added: “70 per cent described chronic headache or neurological symptoms, 54 per cent had concentration disorders and 62 per cent circulatory problems like cold sweat and tachycardia.
“We hypothesise that the persisting changes of blood cell physical phenotypes could contribute to the long term impairment of circulation and oxygen delivery linked with Covid-19.”
Researchers previously found that large cells called megakaryocytes take up space and leave less room for blood to pass through the brain freely in patients who have Covid.
Professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, David Nauen said this could be key to understand how the brain is impacted by the Covid-19 virus.
He said: “The brain cortex is richly vascularized with capillaries, if some proportion of capillaries are blocked or occluded by these cells, it blocks some level of blood flow.
“An alteration in flow of blood in a system that is so precisely delivering oxygen based on time and need could be leading to impaired cognitive function, like a brain fog picture.”
Prof Nauen said it was key that researchers learn how the cells are getting into the brain and what they are doing once they are in there.
Other scientists claim that people who experience brain fog are likely to have inflammation.
