Brain Behav Immun Health
March 2025
Long COVID is a global health concern, leading to persistent symptoms and disability long after the acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in most age groups. The condition can manifest even following mild COVID-19, and in young people, it may have serious adverse consequences for educational attainment and transition to adulthood. Fatigue is the most prevalent symptom, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Health Psychol
April 2025
In a recent paper in , Kielland et al. present a study with the first objective of documenting how helpful or unhelpful persons with ME perceive common services and interventions. The authors recruited participants by respondent driven sampling, a method that aims to produce estimates that correct for sampling bias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) is emerging as a common and debilitating condition with few treatment options.
Objective: To assess the effectiveness of a brief outpatient rehabilitation program based on a cognitive and behavioral approach for patients with PCC.
Design, Setting, And Participants: Patients with mild to moderate PCC were randomized 1:1 to an established transdiagnostic rehabilitation program or care as usual at a single referral center recruiting from the region of the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority.
Pathogens
October 2024
Adolescents most often experience mild acute COVID-19, but may still face fatigue and persistent symptoms such as post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) and post-infective fatigue syndrome (PIFS). We explored the fecal microbiota of SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative non-hospitalized adolescents and young adults (12-25 years of age) in the "Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 in Adolescents" (LoTECA) project, a longitudinal observational cohort study. With a targeted qPCR approach, the quantities of 100 fecal bacterial taxa were measured at baseline (early convalescent stage) in 145 SARS-CoV-2-positive and 32 SARS-CoV-2 negative participants and after six months in 107 of the SARS-CoV-2-positive and 19 of the SARS-CoV-2 negative participants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Post COVID-19 condition (PCC) is a complication of SARS-COV-2 infection and can lead to long-term disability.
Methods: The present study was designed to analyse the gene expression patterns of PCC through bulk RNA sequencing of whole blood and to explore the potential molecular mechanisms of PCC. Whole blood was collected from 80 participants enrolled in a prospective cohort study following SARS-CoV-2 infected and non-infected individuals for 6 months after recruitment and was used for bulk RNA sequencing.
Introduction: The post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) is characterized by debilitating persistent symptoms, including symptoms suggesting neurological aberrations such as concentration difficulties, impaired memory, pain, and sleep disturbances. The underlying mechanisms remain elusive. This study aimed to investigate brain injury biomarkers, neurocognitive test performance, and self-reported neurological and neuropsychological symptoms in young people with PCC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Long-term stress causing altered hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dynamics with cortisol dysfunction may be involved in the pathophysiology of functional somatic disorders (FSD), but studies on adolescents with multi-system FSD are lacking. Therefore, we investigated: 1) whether hair cortisol concentration (HCC) differentiates adolescents with multi-system FSD from a) a population-based sample and b) a subgroup derived from the sample reporting a high physical symptom load, and 2) whether FSD population HCC is associated with primary symptom presentations and self-perceived stress.
Methods: We used data from a clinical sample with multi-system FSD (N = 91, age 15-19 years) and a population-based sample (N = 1,450, age 16-17 years) including a subgroup with top 10% total scores on physical symptoms (N = 147).
Background: Adolescent transition programs are patient education programs. They are geared towards enabling adolescents with chronic or long-term illnesses to become active partners in their health care and manage their own health. Although there is agreement about their importance, there is not an agreement on content or how they should be delivered.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransplant Direct
December 2023
Background: Factors associated with sympathetic and parasympathetic sinoatrial reinnervation after heart transplantation (HTx) are inadequately studied.
Methods: Fifty transplant recipients were examined at 7 to 12 wk (index visit), 6, 12, 24, and 36 mo after HTx. Supine rest heart rate variability in the low-frequency (LF) domain (sympathetic and parasympathetic sinoatrial reinnervation) and the high-frequency (HF) domain (parasympathetic sinoatrial reinnervation) were measured repeatedly and related to selected recipient, donor, and perisurgical characteristics.
Scand J Prim Health Care
December 2023
Importance: The prevalence and baseline risk factors of post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) remain unresolved among the large number of young people who experienced mild COVID-19.
Objectives: To determine the point prevalence of PCC 6 months after the acute infection, to determine the risk of development of PCC adjusted for possible confounders, and to explore a broad range of potential risk factors.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study included nonhospitalized individuals from 2 counties in Norway between ages 12 and 25 years who underwent reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing.
Introduction: Both public and scientific attention have shifted from the acute COVID-19 illness to the chronic disability experienced by a proportion of COVID-19 convalescents. Post COVID-19 condition, a term used for long-lasting symptoms after COVID-19, can affect individuals across all disease severity and age groups. Data on post-COVID-19 symptomatology, epidemiology and pathophysiology in adolescents and young adults are scarce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Cognitive difficulties are among the most disruptive and disabling problems reported by chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) sufferers. Acute Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is a trigger of chronic fatigue (CF) and CFS. The aim of this study was to investigate subjectively reported and objectively measured cognitive functioning in fatigued and non-fatigued adolescents six months after EBV infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is prevalent among young people, and neurological involvement has been reported. We investigated neurological symptoms, cognitive test results, and biomarkers of brain injury, as well as associations between these variables in non-hospitalized adolescents and young adults with COVID-19.
Methods: This study reports baseline findings from an ongoing observational cohort study of COVID-19 cases and non-COVID controls aged 12-25 years (Clinical Trials ID: NCT04686734).
Transplantation
August 2022
Background: Hypertension after heart transplantation (HTx) is common. We investigated predictors of and mechanisms for hypertension development during the first year after HTx, with particular attention toward immunosuppressive agents, reinnervation processes, and donor/recipient sex.
Methods: Heart transplant recipients (HTxRs) were consecutively enrolled 7 to 12 wk after surgery and followed prospectively for 12 mo.
Summary: Mild, subacute COVID-19 in young people show inflammatory enhancement, but normal pulmonary function. Inflammatory markers are associated with age and male sex, whereas clinical symptoms are associated with age and female sex, but not with objective disease markers.
Background: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is widespread among adolescents and young adults across the globe.
J Psychosom Res
March 2022
Background: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) causes infectious mononucleosis (IM) that can lead to chronic fatigue syndrome. The CEBA-project (Chronic fatigue following acute EBV infection in Adolescents) has followed 200 patients with IM and here we present an immunological profiling of adolescents with IM related to clinical characteristics.
Methods: Patients were sampled within 6 weeks of debut of symptoms and after 6 months.
J Heart Lung Transplant
July 2022
Background: Heart transplantation (HTx) surgically denervates the heart. We examined indices of sinoatrial reinnervation, with emphasis on (1) the occurrence and timing of parasympathetic reinnervation, and (2) the consequences of reinnervation for heart rate (HR) responsiveness and arterial baroreceptor sensitivity.
Methods: Fifty HTx recipients were prospectively followed for 36 months after surgery.
Fatigue is a dominant feature of both acute and convalescent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (sometimes termed "long-COVID"), with up to 46% of patients reporting fatigue that lasts from weeks to months. The investigators of the international Collaborative on Fatigue Following Infection (COFFI) conducted a systematic review of post-COVID fatigue and a narrative review on fatigue after other infections, and made recommendations for clinical and research approaches to assessing fatigue after COVID-19. In the majority of COVID-19 cohort studies, persistent fatigue was reported by a significant minority of patients, ranging from 13% to 33% at 16-20 weeks post-symptom onset.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is defined according to subjective symptoms only, and several conflicting case definition exist. Previous research has discovered certain biological alterations. The aim of the present study was to explore possible subgroups based on biological markers within a widely defined cohort of adolescent CFS patients and investigate to what extent eventual subgroups are associated with other variables.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Heart transplantation (HTx) implies denervation of afferent neural connections. Reinnervation of low-pressure cardiopulmonary baroreceptors might impact the development and treatment of hypertension, but little is known of its occurrence. The present prospective study investigated possible afferent reinnervation of low-pressure cardiopulmonary baroreceptors during the first year after heart transplantation.
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