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Interviewer: Dr. İmdat Eroğlu,
thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview with us
today, to discuss mounting evidence implicating
long Covid as a probable trigger for a range of
seemingly unrelated underlying pathophysiologies.
To start things off,
could you provide us with an account of the type of accumulating evidence
suggesting long Covid may indeed induce long-term detrimental health effects?
Dr. Eroğlu: At the beginning of the pandemic,
probably no one could have predicted that COVID-19 could become a chronic illness.
However, with the growing number of people healing from COVID-19,
a significant proportion of them have reported experiencing some long-lasting symptoms.
Actually the term 'long Covid' was first used by some patient advocacy groups,
and was later recognized by scientists and clinicians.
Long Covid is a clinical term that simply refers to
the persistence of symptoms in individuals recovered from COVID-19.
It further divides into two phases.
The first phase is known as 'sub-acute Covid',
which is the presence or persistence of symptoms after
four weeks of symptom onset, but less than 12 weeks.
However, if it extends beyond 12 weeks, it is called 'chronic Covid'.
They're collectively known as long Covid.
Although any COVID-19 survivor can have long Covid, hospitalization,
having a chronic illness, female gender, obesity, intensive care unit
admission during acute infection, and the requirement of mechanical ventilation,
