“Cocolate”: a large-scale study to understand the “long-term Covid”

Tourcoing (North) hospital is coordinating a “long Covid” study, which could eventually include 1,000 patients across France, in an attempt to identify causes of persistent symptoms in some patients, sometimes months after the acute phase of the disease.

Titled “Cocolate,” for late covid coordination, this study is currently underway, including its first patients, explains its coordinating physician, Dr. Olivier Robineau, of CH Dron’s infectious disease department. “The idea is that the study will gradually extend to at least 20 hospitals” and follow about 1,000 patients, he explains, noting that it is, to his knowledge, “the only study has stated how to try to recover patients across the country. “.

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These patients, who have not had a very severe form of Covid-19 and have not been hospitalized in intensive care, will have at least one persistent symptom in common two months after the acute episode of the disease. They will be referred by their primary care physicians to hospitals, who will offer them a coordinated path to explore their symptoms and can include them in the study.

Are women most affected?

Tiredness, shortness of breath, feeling of mental slowdown, problems with concentration with the impression of being “in the fog”, headache, joint or chest pain: persistent symptoms are quite numerous but “not very specific”, underlines Dr. Robineau. The study will have to define the symptoms that are really associated with persistent covid, which today does not have “a medical definition because we do not yet have sufficient epidemiological data”.

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The hypotheses about the causes of these symptoms extend from the psychological field, with somatization linked to the stress of the epidemic, to the persistence of an inflammatory reaction, or even to the persistence of the virus. “For the moment, we have the impression that the people who consult are more women, but we are not sure yet,” says Dr Robineau. “All we want is to be able to say that Covid, in 90% of cases, stops in less than 3 weeks-a month and that in some people it will last six months or a year, but that afterwards people will be fine”, he hopes, pointing out that mononucleosis or cytomegalovirus can tire for even six months, without there being any concern for the patient.