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21 PATIENT SAFETY & OUTCOMES Why no treatment for long COVID-19 exists yet By Mackenzie Bean T wo years into the pandemic, millions of people are living with long COVID-19, and there is still no proven treatment for the condition, Nature reported Aug. 9. A key hurdle researchers must still overcome on the quest to find a long COVID-19 treatment is understanding the root cause — or causes — of the condition. e three leading hypotheses are that: • e virus lingers in some people's bodies, stimulating a reaction from the immune system that causes symptoms. • Antibodies generated by the infection mistakenly attack the body's own proteins. • e virus may cause tiny blood clots that block the flow of oxygen to the body's tissues. With no proven treatment available, physicians and long COVID-19 patients are le to experiment with medications and rehabilitation therapies to address a patchwork of changing symptoms, including fatigue and brain fog. "If you look at long COVID at this moment in time, I'd paint a slightly 'Wild West' and desperate picture really," Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, told Nature. More than 25 clinical trials are currently underway assessing potential therapies for long COVID-19, though many are small or weren't designed with control groups to offer definitive results. Yet researchers are hopeful that results from several key studies slated to wrap up in the next year could pave the way for new treatments. "I'm still optimistic," Mr. Altmann told Nature. "e right stuff is going on, and there's a fair amount of funding out there. Something is going to give." n Monkeypox may cause heart muscle inflammation, case report finds By Erica Carbajal A patient with a monkeypox infection in Portugal developed myocarditis, or heart muscle inflammation, a week after the onset of monkeypox symptoms, researchers said in a case report published Sept. 2. About one week after first developing monkeypox symptoms, a 31-year-old male patient presented to the emergency room reporting chest tightness that radiated through his left arm, according to the report published in JACC: Case Reports. The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit and cardiac magnetic resonance mapping was used to confirm the inflammation. The patient fully recovered and was discharged after one week. "This case highlights cardiac involvement as a potential complication associated with monkeypox infection," said Ana Isabel Pinho, MD, lead study author and physician in the department of cardiology at São João University Hospital Center in Portugal, according to a news release from the American College of Cardiology sent to Becker's. Myocarditis is typically caused by a viral infection and was previously associated with smallpox, which is caused by a virus in the same family as the monkeypox virus. n Image Credit: Adobe Stock