In 1969, as chronicled in his book " Awakenings," the neurologist Oliver Sacks discovered that temporary remission of these chronic symptoms, coined post-encephalitic parkinsonism, could be achieved through the use of the Parkinson's drug L-DOPA. ![]() About one-third of encephalitis lethargica patients eventually died from respiratory failure caused by neurological dysfunction, while many survivors continued to suffer from ongoing Parkinson's-disease-like (neurocognitive) symptoms. A subset of these individuals fell into a semi-comatose state that lasted for decades. The condition was colloquially known as "sleeping sickness," as those infected developed extreme fatigue, neurocognitive impairments, psychiatric illness, and movement disorders. The cause of encephalitis lethargica remains one of the largest medical mysteries of the 20th century, though some scientists contend that the Spanish Flu may have been the trigger. What a long COVID diagnosis means when your doctor knows little more than GoogleĪround the same time, cases of a new brain-attacking disease called encephalitis lethargica started to emerge, affecting up to one million people worldwide. For example, many claim that debilitating lethargy caused by this post-viral syndrome led to the " famine of corms" in the region that is Tanzania today, as farmers lacked the energy to plant, harvest, and shear months after getting sick. ![]() Back in 1918, these mysteriously persistent long flu symptoms wreaked havoc on human health and local economies. ![]() The medical establishment calls this condition post-acute infection syndrome (PAIS). And the similarities suggest that what we think of as long COVID is not necessarily a novel condition, but merely one more instance of the medical aftermath that accompanies certain infections. This "long flu," an echo of sorts of the Spanish Flu epidemic itself, has its parallel in long COVID today - a similar cluster of symptoms that persist in those who were previously infected with COVID-19. While the initial pandemic forced governments to organize a response to the sudden crisis, an epidemic of chronic illness may not raise alarms that spur us into immediate action.
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