Latest news with #longCOVID
News.com.au
4 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
‘I should be dead': Olympics left USA icon damaged forever
Mary Lou Retton became a true American hero while still a teenager, scooping up a spectacular gold in the individual all-around competition at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, at age 16. The price of such glories had to be paid later in life, the NY Post reports. 'She couldn't even take a full breath when I talked to her, she takes these little panting breaths,' ex-brother-in-law Shaun Kelley, who remains close to her, told The Post. It's a far cry from when she proudly became the first female athlete to grace a Wheaties box in her Olympic year. Retton, now 57, frequently wears an oxygen cannula, remains on medication, and has undergone many debilitating hip surgeries that have left her struggling physically. An arrest report claimed she reeked of booze, was slurring her words, and had a bottle of wine by her side. Somewhat ironically, she was just two miles from her namesake, Mary Lou Retton Drive, when it happened. Kelley said Retton, who also has a home in Boerne, Texas, continues to undergo treatment for long COVID and lung problems, and he was alarmed by the alleged presence of the wine. 'She is on all these meds and one drink could throw off her brain chemistry,' he claimed, adding that since the incident, from which she quickly bailed out of jail — 'she is healing' and lying low in West Virginia. 'She's a great mother and a giving person, she raised four amazing daughters,' he added, saying he hopes she gets better. He also clarified that Retton has no history of alcohol abuse that he knew of. Retton — whose daughters are all with ex Shannon Kelley, whom she divorced after 27 years of marriage in 2018 — suffered another health scare in 2023 when she contracted 'a very rare form of pneumonia,' according to a post made by her second-oldest daughter, McKenna Kelley. 'Girl, I should be dead,' she told People magazine a year later, describing how she spent a month in the hospital. At one time, doctors told her daughters — Shayla Rae, 30, McKenna, 28, Skyla, 25, and Emma Jean, 22 — 'to come to say their goodbyes.' She pulled through, but was left depleted. 'My lungs are so scarred. It will be a lifetime of recovery. My physicality was the only thing I had, and it was taken away from me. It's embarrassing,' she added to People. Even worse, she had no insurance, saying in another interview with NBC, in which she appeared with an oxygen cannula in her nose, 'I just couldn't afford it,' citing her divorce and the underlying health conditions she had been left with, after 30 orthopedic surgeries. McKenna created an online fundraiser that brought in almost $500,000 from fans, sportspeople, and public figures shocked by how Retton had seemingly fallen on such hard times. McKenna told USA Sports last year her mother started running into money troubles during the COVID pandemic, which limited her ability to earn money 'because she was not able to work and give speeches for two years due to the pandemic.' However, it appears Retton traded an older Porsche for her current one during this same period, getting the newer car in December 2021, according to a Carfax report seen by The Post. Retton had retired from professional gymnastics in 1986, not long after her gold medal triumph. She capitalised on her fame and signed endorsement deals with many products, then became a commentator for NBC at the 1988 Olympics. She wrote a daily column through the 1992 and 1996 Olympics for USA Today and co-hosted a TV show, 'Road To Olympic Gold,' per her USA Gymnastics biography. Retton also tried her hand at movies, appearing in 'Scrooged' in 1988 and 1994's 'Naked Gun 33 1/3' as well as making guest appearances in shows including 'Baywatch' and 'Knots Landing,' plus continuing to take bookings as a motivational speaker and 'fitness ambassador.' Her last high-profile bookings were a 2014 Super Bowl XLVIII commercial and a 2018 stint on 'Dancing With The Stars,' where she finished in ninth place. However, after the goodwill brought in with Retton's pneumonia fundraiser, people began to ask questions. It was pointed out that it's illegal to deny coverage to those with underlying conditions. Others asked where any excess money from the fundraiser, which had originally set its goal at $50,000, went. The family claimed they donated money not used for treatment to the American Lung Association, although the charity said it wouldn't comment on individual donations when contacted by The Post. It also emerged that during her divorce from quarterback-turned-real estate developer Shannon Kelley, she was awarded almost $2 million in cash, according to the Daily Mail, as well as the profits from selling two houses. She was also given a vehicle valued at $43,000, which she later traded in. Retton, who did not respond to requests for comment, also reached an out-of-court settlement with the maker of her metal hip replacements, Biomet, in 2019 for an unknown amount, per the Mail's report. Retton's corporate LLC, which she used for her speaking engagements, is now inactive but she has started new businesses. She formed a company called Forever Our Legacy, described as 'For Mothers & Daughters,' which has run a women's gymnastics competition tour annually since 2022. The Forever Our Legacy competition is planned to take place in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in February 2026. The event also includes meet-and-greet opportunities with Retton and her daughter, who was also a competitive gymnast. Retton also partnered with a Michigan leotard company in 2023 to sell her own themed leotards, and McKenna sells video messages on Cameo for $100 each. Shaun Kelley also confirmed that Retton is excited to attend her youngest daughter Emma Jean's wedding to former University of Arkansas football star Hudson Clark next month. 'They inspire me, and they do every day,' Retton told People of her four girls. 'They're extraordinary young women and my biggest accomplishment. Take my five medals. I'll take my daughters over that anytime.'
Medscape
4 days ago
- Health
- Medscape
Sorting Out Long COVID Symptoms in Babies
By the time many children with lingering symptoms of COVID-19 reach Lael Yonker's pediatric pulmonology clinic, they have likely been told those problems are 'just a cold.' 'When kids come to me, they're very frustrated. They often will cry just because I'm listening to them and I'm not questioning whether or not they have long COVID,' Yonker, MD, associate professor of pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said. 'I'm trying to address their symptoms.' Often, family members bring up the possibility of long COVID, she said. That's because when caregivers relay the symptoms of poor appetite and sleepiness, most pediatricians do not think the chronic condition could be a possible diagnosis, she said. Until now, only small studies had been published on characterizations of the condition in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, Yonker said. But new research published in JAMA Pediatrics found distinct patterns of long COVID symptoms in young children. Researchers from the NIH-funded RECOVER-Pediatrics Consortium analyzed data from over 1000 children aged 0-5 years, comparing those with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection to uninfected peers. The study found that 14% of infected infants and toddlers and 15% of infected preschoolers had probable long COVID, similar to rates in teens and school-aged children. For infants and toddlers, the most strongly associated and prolonged symptoms associated with a history of COVID-19 infection were poor appetite, trouble sleeping, wet and dry cough, and stuffy nose. In preschool-aged children, daytime tiredness, and dry cough were prominent. Teens and school-aged children are more likely to have memory trouble, lightheadedness, and other neurologic issues. The findings may challenge the assumptions of clinicians that very young children are less affected by long COVID, held in part because this population often cannot describe what they are experiencing. 'There is an underappreciation among parents and pediatricians that long COVID can present in younger children,' said Suchitra Rao, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Aurora, who was not involved in the study. 'Much of the existing literature has focused on adults, so this is an important study which can shed more light on how younger children present with lingering symptoms.' Symptoms Often Last Months in Young Kids Rachel Gross, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City and lead author of the new study, said identifying long COVID in very young children can be challenging. 'They have limited verbal communication, limited social skills, and even a limited understanding of what their symptoms mean to them and how they can express it,' she said. Because of this, Gross and her colleagues relied on caregiver reports in the study. The study included 1186 children under the age of 6 years, 670 of whom had tested positive for the virus at some point; 516 children had not been infected. Caregivers of all children completed a detailed survey about their children's symptoms that had lasted for more than 4 weeks since the pandemic began, whether or not the problems were related to COVID-19 infection. The researchers defined prolonged symptoms as those lasting more than 4 weeks and still present at the time of reporting. On average, infants and toddlers had symptoms that lingered for 10 months and nearly 17 months in preschool-aged children. Building Clinician Awareness of Pediatric Long COVID Using their findings, the researchers developed an age-specific tool to identify children likely to have long COVID. For infants and toddlers, symptoms like poor appetite and sleep problems were more common. For preschoolers, fatigue and dry cough were key signs. If a child's score crossed a certain threshold, they were classified as 'long COVID probable.' Children with higher scores on the index 'often had worse overall health, lower quality of life, and delays in development,' said Tanayott Thaweethai, PhD, associate director of Biostatistics Research and Engagement at Massachusetts General Hospital and an author of the study. The instrument is currently applicable in research settings, not clinical practice, Thaweethai said. 'It's not meant to be by itself a diagnostic tool,' Thaweethai said. 'There very much could be children who are experiencing long COVID who may not present in exactly this way.' Still, Thaweethai said he hopes pediatricians recognize its potential value. 'These are important signs that warrant further investigation to really determine if these symptoms for that child are attributable to a prior COVID infection,' he said. Long COVID Rules for the Youngest Current clinical guidelines for long COVID rely on research in adults. But across pediatric and adult medicine, the condition remains without a clinical biomarker. 'There isn't a blood test right now or any specific test for diagnosing long COVID,' Gross said. 'It really is diagnosed based on this history of prolonged symptoms.' Gross suggested clinicians ask parents to track their children's symptoms — documenting start date, duration, and severity. While the study did not specifically evaluate the effects of vaccination on the risk for long COVID, Thaweethai said prior studies have suggested vaccines for the disease are protective against prolonged symptoms. 'There are essentially no treatments for long COVID, and vaccination can prevent COVID. Therefore, it's one of our only tools for preventing long COVID,' he said. 'We really need to understand how long children are having these symptoms, how they wax and wane over time, how getting a reinfection with COVID changes the symptoms and the trajectory,' Gross said. 'If we're seeing these different symptoms in infants and toddlers and preschool aged children, what happens when those particular children enter school age? What happens to the symptoms that they have at that point? We don't have the answers to those questions yet.' As clinicians and researchers continue to untangle the complexities of long COVID in children, Yonker urged pediatricians to keep listening. 'Long COVID is a disease that impacts life,' she said. 'Some of these kids have their lives impacted — if there's school refusal, if they're having post-exertional malaise and not able to participate in activities in school and learn to their potential.' Lara Salahi is a health journalist based in Boston.
Medscape
12-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Cardiovascular Implications of Long COVID, Severe COVID
As cases of long COVID — often defined as symptoms that weren't present before persisting for 3 or more months after the infection — became more prevalent and alarming, researchers began to zero in on the commonly reported cardiovascular symptoms of fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, and palpitations, among others. Long-COVID patients, much research has found, have significantly higher odds of developing cardiac complications than those without long COVID. Now, some researchers recommend that severe COVID, such as cases requiring hospitalization, be viewed as an independent cardiovascular risk factor, regardless of the patient's cardiac health history, and that aggressive measures be initiated. Others say there's not yet enough evidence to recognize severe COVID as an independent risk factor. How Many Are Affected? Statistics about how widespread long COVID is vary, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating in 2022 that more than 40% of US adults reported having COVID, and 1 in 5 were still reporting symptoms. At any one time, according to the National Institutes of Health, a million people are out of work due to long COVID, and as many as 23 million Americans may have long-COVID symptoms. Severe COVID-19 as a 'Coronary Artery Disease Risk Equivalent' 'Severe COVID is a coronary artery disease risk equivalent,' Stanley Hazen, MD, PhD, co–section head of Preventive Cardiology and Cardiac Rehabilitation and department chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences at Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, told Medscape Medical News . Stanley Hazen, MD, PhD He bases that statement on a study his team did, using data from the UK Biobank to identify 10,005 people who were positive for polymerase chain reaction (PCR)–based tests for COVID-19 or who were hospitalized for COVID-19 between February 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020. The researchers also looked at 217,730 population control individuals and 38,860 propensity-matched control individuals during the same time. They used proportional hazard models to evaluate COVID-19 for its association with long-term risks (> 1000 days) for major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) and as a coronary artery disease risk equivalent. The risk for MACEs was elevated in those with COVID-19 at all levels of severity (hazard ratio [HR], 2.09; P < .0005) and to a greater extent in those hospitalized for COVID-19 (HR, 3.85; P < .0005). Hospitalization for COVID-19, they found, was a coronary artery disease risk equivalent because the risk for incident MACEs in those with severe COVID without a history of cardiovascular disease was even higher than that found in patients with cardiovascular disease without COVID-19 (HR, 1.21; P < .005). 'We had a 3-year period of follow-up,' Hazen said. 'That risk seems to be persistent. If you look at all comers, all with a positive PCR test, we found about a doubling of the risk for heart attack, stroke, and death.' 'We only looked at people who were 50 and older, but it was over 200,000 subjects,' Hazen said. 'The other thing that was clear is that the more severe the infection, the higher the risk of post-COVID cardiac events.' Over the 3-year follow-up, he said, the risk for a cardiac event was the same in patients with severe COVID and in those with a history of heart attack. In clinical practice, he pointed out, 'a coronary artery disease risk equivalent has been used as the threshold for escalating preventive efforts in the community.' Having diabetes, for example, is a coronary artery disease risk equivalent, he said. Based on the research, 'we are arguing that if you had severe COVID, we should be treating these patients as if they have coronary artery disease and really escalate their preventive care.' For these patients, he recommended a more aggressive lowering of cholesterol levels, such as aiming for a low-density lipoprotein level of below 70 or even lower and to be more aggressive with antiplatelet therapy, such as low-dose aspirin. 'It looks like the degree of infection somehow 'rewires' a person and makes them more proinflammatory long term,' Hazen said. 'We weren't able to look at the effect of vaccination [on the degree of infection or the MACE risk],' he said, as the study was launched before vaccines were available. 'There is every reason to believe vaccines will attenuate this risk because they reduce the likelihood of serious infection.' In Hazen's view, the most important take-home is that 'we should be looking at COVID as a risk factor' for heart disease, 'and we don't yet.' Long COVID and the Heart: 11 Studies Other research has produced similar links between severe COVID and cardiac issues. For instance, long COVID more than doubles the risk for new cardiac symptoms, researchers conducting a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of 11 studies with 5.8 million people found. As the definition of long COVID varies, these researchers termed it as symptoms lasting for at least 4 weeks and occurring at least 2 months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. Those with a history of long COVID had a 2.3-2.5 times higher rate of cardiac complications than those without ( P = .01). Another View: Not Enough Evidence Kieran Quinn, MD, PhD, a clinician-scientist at Sinai Health System and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, does not agree that a history of severe COVID can be termed a coronary artery disease risk equivalent at this point. Kieran Quinn, MD, PhD 'I don't believe we have sufficient evidence to recognize is as an independent risk factor that is comparable to more conventional risk factors like smoking, diabetes, and hypertension,' he told Medscape Medical News . He does agree the cardiac implications are associated with severe and long COVID. With his colleagues, Quinn set out to provide guidance to clinicians on the workup and management of adults with suspected long COVID and unexplained cardiac symptoms, retrieving 260 articles from an extensive databases and examining closely the five studies that met their criteria. The researchers noted that about 15% of adult Canadians with SARS-CoV-2 infection develop post-COVID condition or long COVID. Among the cardiovascular symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, and palpitations. Among the recommendations are to conduct routine tests such as baseline ECGs, thyroid-stimulating hormone, and blood glucose levels but against the routine use of other tests, such as cardiac MRIs, reserving it for those with symptoms suggestive of cardiac involvement. Comparing COVID, Influenza, Sepsis, and Health Impacts Quinn pointed, too, to what he calls 'a growing body of literature demonstrating that multiple different types of acute infections can lead to the development of acute and chronic cardiovascular conditions.' He cited his own study, asking if the risk of newly developing medical and mental health conditions are greater within a year of hospitalization for severe COVID vs influenza or sepsis. The population-based cohort study in Ontario included all adults who were hospitalized for COVID-19 between April 1, 2020, and October 31, 2021, with historical comparator groups hospitalized for influenza or sepsis and a contemporary comparator group hospitalized for sepsis. The researchers looked for a new occurrence of 13 conditions, including cardiovascular, neurological, and mental health conditions and rheumatoid arthritis within 1 year of hospitalization. Of the 379,366 adults included, 26,499 survived hospitalizations for COVID, 299,989 were historical control individuals hospitalized for influenza or sepsis, and 52,878 were hospitalized for sepsis. Hospitalization for COVID-19 vs influenza was associated with an increased 1-year risk for venous thromboembolic disease (adjusted HR, 1.77) but with no increased risk for selected ischemic and nonischemic cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disorders, neurological disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, or mental health conditions compared with influenza or sepsis cohorts. According to Quinn, it showed that 'apart from an elevated risk of venous thromboembolism within 1 year, the burden of post-acute medical and mental health conditions among those who survived hospitalization for COVID-19 was comparable with other acute infectious illnesses, including the development of chronic cardiovascular conditions like heart failure.' The take-home point, he suggested, is that 'many of the post-acute consequences of COVID-19 may be related to the severity of infectious illness necessitating hospitalization rather than being the direct consequence of infection with SARS-CoV-2.' Guidance for Helping Long-COVID Patients Quinn is also a co-chair of the Canadian Guidelines for Post COVID-19 Condition and pointed to 80 evidence-informed recommendations released recently for the care of people with long COVID, with more guidelines expected in the coming months. 'My advice to all physicians caring for people living with long COVID is to use these guidelines to guide shared decision-making around testing and treatments.' The CDC also offers clinical guidance for managing long COVID. Hazen and Quinn had no relevant disclosures.
