Hello and welcome to Five Things. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, September 6, 2023.

And this is a special episode of Five Things.

In the beginning, people suffering from what is now called long COVID were forced into the shadows.

Their symptoms, debilitating tiredness, lung issues, and non-specific pain didn't seem to fit together.

They ping-ponged from specialist to specialist, no one seemed to want to treat all of their symptoms.

Over three years into the pandemic, the medical community is still grappling with the question of treatment.

Why has it remained such a mystery? I'm joined today by Dr. Francesca Bodwyn, the director of the Long COVID Initiative,

and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Brown University.

Dr. Bodwyn, thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me.

So I want to start with a recent analysis that came out in the journal, Nature Medicine,

that showed that people who have had even a mild case of COVID are at a heightened risk of long problems, fatigue, diabetes,

and other conditions associated with long COVID for up to two years.

First, what is long COVID?

You know, I pause because it's still hard to answer that question.

I can give you the definition that the World Health Organization gives us, which is new or persistent symptoms,

three months after an initial COVID infection lasting for two months of longer,

and those symptoms can take a variety of forms.

And my initial hesitation is because two and a half, three years later,

we're still really grappling to understand and accurately define long COVID.

Well, for people who suffer from this disease, it can be isolating and devastating.

I recently saw a tweet on X, formerly known as Twitter, by one sufferer who wrote,

...