Long COVID is an infectious encephalitis caused by SARS-CoV-2, but not exclusively. Report on a Young Woman.

Jamoulle, M. (2024). Long COVID is an infectious encephalitis caused by SARS-CoV-2, but not exclusively. Report on a Young Woman. ORBi-University of Liège. https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/316672.

https://hdl.handle.net/2268/316672

[en] The following text is a pseudonymized reproduction of the report I sent to the patient’s treating physician, who is the 150th individual I have encountered since July 2021 with this unnamed condition. This publication is made with the explicit and written consent of the young woman and her mother. I have no conflict of interest. The complexity of the Long COVID phenomenon is highlighted, along with the despair and sense of abandonment felt by the patient and her family, as I have emphasized in another testimony.1 This text also illustrates a presentation I made to an organization that helps brain-damaged patients and supports the Long Covid patients. 2 Physicians are defeated by the patient. The doctor-patient relationship can never be established or does so belatedly. The peculiarities of the Belgian healthcare system are well highlighted: no cost restrictions, direct access to specialists, multiple hospital options, lack of synthesis function, and involvement of multiple concurrent stakeholders. In my 50th year of practice as a family physician, the search for the best way to navigate uncertainty facing unusually exhausted patients led me to utilize an imaging technique considered obsolete but surprisingly reveals vascular blood flow disorders. Almost all patients have also agreed to participate in genetic, proteomic, and transcriptomic research made possible by the Human COVID Genetic Effort network (https://www.covidhge.com/) launched by Professors Casanova and Su. In Belgium, Dr. Van Weyenbergh, a senior immunologist at the Rega Institute Immunology Laboratory in Leuven, conducts transcriptomic studies. These studies are currently on hold due to a lack of research funding. Blood samples are also analyzed at the Brodin Lab in Stockholm and Necker Hospital in France, under Casanova’s supervision. My clinical experience with this fluctuating disease and international research converge on the hypothesis of a chronic viral infection. It is conceivable that Long COVID-19 will change its designation and become chronic COVID-19.