‘Stress hormone’ levels key indicators whether a person will suffer long-Covid’

The ‘stress hormone’ cortisol could be at the center of the mystery that is ‘long Covid’ – the puzzling phenomena where a person still experiences symptoms of the virus for months after recovery.

Researchers at Yale University found that people who suffer from a case that could be considered ‘long Covid’ were generating around half as much cortisol as their healthy peers.

The exact link between cortisol and long Covid has not yet been found, but the Yale findings could open the door to explanation of a new hypothesis for what is causing the mysterious disease.

Researchers, whose findings have been made available pre-print online and pending peer review, gathered data from 215 people. 

Of that group, 99 had a case of long Covid, 40 had no recorded COVID-19 infections, while the remaining 76 recovered from the virus without long-term complications.

The Yale research team noted that some long Covid patients that have been treated by boosting their cortisol levels have shown some improvement. 

 – Mail Online