Radio 5 live - long COVID study using Xenon gas

Treatment explaining why many of the 1.3 million people in the UK living with long COVID experience breathlessness. Traditional lung scans don't explain it. But researchers on a pilot study in Oxford are using a different technique. As a health correspondent Catherine Burns explains:

Volunteers were asked to inhale xenon gas as they had an MRI scan. It behaves like oxygen and should cross instantly from the lungs into the bloodstream. But these tests showed it wasn't happening as smoothly in some long COVID patients. The numbers in the trial was small and there are still plenty of questions researchers want to answer, including exactly what is causing these lung abnormalities. But they've described the initial results as very exciting.

The study was funded by NCIMI, Innovate UK and NIHR has shown that some long COVID patients have hidden damage to their lungs.