About 400 million people worldwide are thought to have long-term COVID and 17.8 million of those are in the US, according to the medical journal Jam.

The state with the highest rate of prolonged COVID is West Virginia, with 10.6 percent of its population experiencing the disease, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other states with high long-term COVID rates included Montana, Alabama, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wyoming.

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The states with the lowest long-term COVID rates were Maryland, Vermont, Hawaii and Rhode Island.

6.9% of the United States population was found to have long-term experience of COVID in early 2023, according to a study published earlier this year.

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Dr. Linda Geng, co-director Stanford Universitysaid the Post-Acute Syndrome COVID-19 Clinic Newsweek that while CDC data require further study and are likely multifactorial, it is “clear that the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing health inequities”.

She said states with the highest long-term COVID prevalence “tend to have more rural communities and rural communities that face structural and social health care challenges that have exacerbated worsening outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic “.

Geng added that those states also tend to “have lower rates of vaccination against COVID-19, which have been shown to be protective against the development of long-term COVID.”

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States with lower rates of post-COVID health problems had higher rates of COVID-19 vaccinations, she said.

A study from September of this year found that the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of developing long-term COVID.

When the pandemic began, about 10 percent of those who caught COVID-19 went on to develop long-term COVID, but that risk is now at 3.5 percent among vaccinated people, a Yale Medicine study found.

In addition to the vaccine helping to reduce the risk of developing long-term COVID, said Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. PJ Utz. Newsweek that there have also been important advances in long-term research on COVID.

“We now know that a significant proportion of patients with long-term COVID have evidence for ongoing immune activation, including abnormalities in blood proteins called complement, dysregulation of blood clotting pathways and activation of the endothelium, which lines blood vessels,” he said, adding that this thing. it could be linked to cardiovascular disease and brain disease.

He said some patients “develop autoantibodies, supporting large epidemiologic studies demonstrating that the incidence of autoimmunity increases after infection.”

The virus can also be found in tissues, such as the gut, long after infection, and other studies have linked reactivation of Epstein Bar virus, the virus behind mono, also known as glandular fever, to prolonged COVID, Utz said. Newsweek.

Discussing the future development of long-term COVID treatment, the Stanford professor said “the pace of long-term COVID research is incredibly fast.”

“For example, if lab tests show that inflammation or thrombosis is dysregulated in a patient, therapies that target the immune or coagulation systems, respectively, would be targeted,” he said.

Globally, the condition is estimated to have an annual economic impact of about $1 trillion, about 1 percent of the global economy, a study from Nature’s Medicine found.

It remains a very widespread condition, Geng said, because COVID-19 is still widespread in the U.S. Long COVID is a condition that can last for years, she said, and “there are currently no curative treatments available.”

The condition has also been found to be more prevalent among women, according to CDC data.

Between August 20 and September 16 this year, about 6.8 percent of all women in the US. and 3.7% of men were currently experiencing long-term symptoms of COVID.

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