A clinic dedicated to people struggling with long-term COVID or persistent symptoms of Lyme disease has just opened at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. This reference center, which will combine clinical and research on these two still poorly understood syndromes, is one of 15 clinics whose creation was announced last May by the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS).
“Although we don’t yet have a very good understanding of the pathophysiology of these two diseases, we know that both sometimes cause long-term sequelae that persist even if the infection seems to have disappeared from the body,” explains the DD Leighanne Parkes, microbiologist-infectiologist at this new clinic.
The clinic located at the Jewish General Hospital will have the mission of offering supportive care to these people suffering from persistent and very disabling symptoms — who will have been referred by a family doctor — through “a holistic rehabilitation approach” which involves the intervention of a multidisciplinary team, which is composed in particular of nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, social workers, rheumatologists, neurologists, microbiologists-infectiologists and specialists in respiratory health, internal medicine and cardiology .
“We have adopted some of the approaches that have been used with some success in myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS) which is a disease that has been known for a longer time and which has similarities to COVID. long lasting, precise DD Parkes. Currently, the resources available to us only allow us to admit patients who meet the criteria — defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) — for post-infectious syndromes of COVID-19 and Lyme disease. . But we hope to be able to extend our services to people with ME in the future. »
The second mission of this clinic aims to increase knowledge about these two syndromes, such as identifying “who is at risk of developing this chronic disease following infection and what are the underlying causes of these persistent symptoms”. “It is an emerging field, our knowledge is constantly evolving”, underlines the DD Parkes.
Researchers from the Lady Davis Research Institute, which is associated with the Jewish General Hospital, will carry out research projects with patients recruited at the clinic, also aimed at testing “diagnostic methods and treatments that will be developed over time.