Available online 31 July 2024 – “Post-COVID-19 condition (also known as long COVID) is generally defined as symptoms persisting for 3 months or more after acute COVID-19. Long COVID can affect multiple organ systems and lead to severe and protracted impairment of function as a result of organ damage. The burden of this disease, both on the individual and on health systems and national economies, is high. In this interdisciplinary Review, with a coauthor with lived experience of severe long COVID, we sought to bring together multiple streams of literature on the epidemiology, pathophysiology (including the hypothesised mechanisms of organ damage), lived experience and clinical manifestations, and clinical investigation and management of long COVID. Although current approaches to long COVID care are largely symptomatic and supportive, recent advances in clinical phenotyping, deep molecular profiling, and biomarker identification might herald a more mechanism-informed and personally tailored approach to clinical care. We also cover the organisation of services for long COVID, approaches to preventing long COVID, and suggestions for future research…in this interdisciplinary Review, we had three goals. First, to make sense of the extensive research literature on long COVID, including literature on epidemiology, basic science, lived experience, and clinical trials of therapy. Second, to bring this state-of-the-science summary into dialogue with current approaches and dilemmas in clinical practice. And third, to acknowledge and respond to the call “for patients’ ongoing contributions to be recognised and used to combat the suffering of multitudes”.

• See also Long COVID – a dystopian game of pinball. Prof Trish Greenhalgh explains the findings of her recent comprehensive Lancet review of Long Covid
• See also eBioMedicine, Volume 104, 105157, June 2024. Relative efficacy of masks and respirators as source control for viral aerosol shedding from people infected with SARS-CoV-2: a controlled human exhaled breath aerosol experimental study. Wear a Mask Please!