Autonomic Nerve Involvement in Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Syndrome (PASC)

Tae Hwan Chung; Antoine Azar

doi:10.3390/jcm12010073

Autonomic Nerve Involvement in Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Syndrome (PASC)

J Clin Med. 2022 Dec 22;12(1):73. doi: 10.3390/jcm12010073.

Authors

Tae Hwan Chung^{1

2}, Antoine Azar³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
² Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
³ Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.

Abstract

The novel SARS-CoV-2 virus and resulting COVID-19 global pandemic emerged in 2019 and continues into 2022. While mortality from COVID-19 is slowly declining, a subset of patients have developed chronic, debilitating symptoms following complete recovery from acute infection with COVID-19. Termed as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 syndrome (PASC), the underlying pathophysiology of PASC is still not well understood. Given the similarity between the clinical phenotypes of PASC and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), it has been postulated that dysautonomia may play a role in the pathophysiology of PASC. However, there have been only a few studies that have examined autonomic function in PASC. In this retrospective study, we performed an analysis of autonomic nerve function testing in PASC patients and compared the results with those of POTS patients and healthy controls. Our results suggest that a significant number of PASC patients have abnormal autonomic function tests, and their clinical features are indistinguishable from POTS.

Keywords: autonomic nerve; dysautonomia; long COVID; post-COVID syndrome; post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 syndrome (PASC); postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.