At Huntington Hospital’s Long COVID Recovery Clinic, Doctors Treat and Study Locals Suffering Lingering, Debilitating Effects of the Virus

Doctors at Huntington Hospital have established a Long COVID Recovery Clinic after many local patients treated for coronavirus reported experiencing an array of lingering symptoms.

“It became very clear several months after our first surge that many patients were experiencing this peculiar syndrome called Long COVID,” said Dr. Kimberly Shriner, the hospital’s top infectious disease expert. “We felt that there was a need in the community to establish a clinic that could help address this mysterious, but very debilitating disease.”

The clinic serves to both treat and study the symptoms in the 45 or so patients currently enrolled, Shriner said early this week.

About 11 patients are also participating in an inflammatory research project on Long COVID, and that number is growing, she said.

According to Shriner, up to 30% of individuals who have experienced acute COVID may develop symptoms of Long COVID,  also known as post-acute sequelae COVID (PASC),  which include debilitating fatigue, neurocognitive changes including memory loss and brain fog and cardiac issues such as palpitations and chest pain.

Nearly a year since the Long COVID Recovery Clinic was established, Shriner said causes of symptoms of the disease are still unknown.

“We’re trying to cover the main symptoms and organ systems that are affected. Of course, [with] COVID, many organ systems can be affected. So we’re trying to rally the excellent consultants that we have here in Pasadena to understand this.”

She said Long COVID is complicated because many different body parts are affected and there can be many different symptoms.

“We think it’s some alteration in the immune system. It may be changes in the clotting system, which is part of the immune system. It may be a post-viral syndrome of some sort.”

“There may be some element of ongoing viral inflammation, a viral driven inflammation, or even perhaps persistent viral particles someplace in the body that we haven’t found yet. It’s very complicated because it’s many different parts of the body that are affected, and there can be many different symptoms.”

Because the causes of the symptoms are still unknown,  Shriner said that treating patients of the disease is a bit tricky.

There may be different treatments depending on what kind of symptomatology each person is experiencing. And each individual may have a different constellation of symptoms. But there are no easy therapies right now.”

Shriner said there may be a role for anti-inflammatory medications, blood thinners and other medications that help modulate the immune system.  The use of new antivirals such as Paxlovid, which is currently recommended for treating acute COVID may also play a role, much like the antiretrovirals used for treating HIV/AIDS.

Despite the difficulties in understanding the disease, Shriner said Huntington Hospital will persevere to get answers to better serve patients, just like what it did when HIV/AIDS emerged as a pandemic.

The hospital established a clinic devoted to patients of HIV. The clinic still exists today, 30 years later, according to Shriner.

“However long COVID, acute COVID, and post-acute COVID continue to be a problem with our patient population, our community will participate in trying to understand it and treat it and prevent it and learn from it,” Shriner said.

The Hospital has partnered with Huntington Medical Research Institute (HMRI)) to conduct research projects seeking to understand the disease.

These research projects will be under the supervision of HMRI Research Director, Dr. Robert Kloner, neurologist Dr. Yafa Minazad, pulmonologist Dr. Brooke Chandrasoma and cardiologist Dr. Krystal Young.