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The findings have calls from scientists for broader care features for long-term covid patients.
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By Benjamin Müller
A study of tens of thousands of other people in Scotland found that one in 20 people who were in poor health with Covid said they had not recovered at all, and another 4 in 10 said they had not fully recovered from their infections several months later.
The authors of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications, attempted to assess the long-term risks of covid by comparing the frequency of symptoms in other people with and without previous covid diagnoses.
People who in the past had symptomatic covid infections reported some lingering symptoms, such as shortness of breath, palpitations, and confusion or difficulty concentrating, at a rate about 3 times higher than other uninfected people in surveys six to 18 months later, according to the study. These patients also had top risks for more than 20 other symptoms similar to the heart, breathing, muscle pain, brainpower and sensory system.
The findings have strengthened scientists’ calls for broader care features for long-term covid patients in the U. S. They are in the U. S. and elsewhere, while providing news.
The study did not identify increased threats of long-term disorders in other people with asymptomatic coronavirus infections. It also found, in a much smaller subset of participants who had received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine before their infections, than vaccination to help reduce, or even eliminate, the threat of some long-term Covid symptoms.
According to the study, people with severe initial cases of covid had a higher risk of long-term problems.
“The good thing about this study is that they have an organization and can isolate the proportion of symptoms attributable to covid infection,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, head of studies at V. A. St. Louis Health Care System and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Washington in St. Louis, who was not involved in the studies.
“It also fits with the broader concept that prolonged covid is a multisystem disorder,” said Dr. Al-Aly, who lives “not just in the brain, not just in the center, that’s all of the above. “
Jill Pell, a professor of public fitness at the University of Glasgow who led the research, said the findings reinforced the importance of providing long-term covid patients who go beyond physical care and also address similar desires to employment, education, poverty and disability.
“This told us that covid may look different on other people, and that it may have a greater effect on your life,” Dr. Pell said. “Any technique to support other people must be, first and foremost, personalized and also holistic. The answer is not just in the physical care sector.
Long Covid refers to a constellation of disorders that can affect patients for months or longer after an infection. Over the past year, researchers have paid more attention to the discouraging side effects as the number of Covid cases has skyrocketed and fitness systems have learned to better manage the early stages of an infection.
U. S. government estimates. U. S. officials have indicated that between 7. 7 million and 23 million more people in the U. S. The U. S. can have Covid for a long time.
Globally, “the condition is devastating people’s lives and livelihoods,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in an article for The Guardian on Wednesday. He called on all countries to devote “immediate and sustained actions to their magnitude. “
The authors of the study in Scotland followed another 33,000 people who had tested positive for the virus since April 2020 and 63,000 who had never been diagnosed with covid. Every six months, those other people were asked about their symptoms, and fatigue, muscle pain, chest pain and neurological problems were added, as well as difficulties in life.
By comparing the frequency of those disorders to inflamed and non-inflamed people, the researchers sought to trump a challenge that many other longtime covid researchers have faced: how to characterize less explicit symptoms of covid when those disorders aren’t unusual overall, either. population and may be prevalent in the midst of a pandemic.
Several of the more unusual long-term covid symptoms known in the study were also reported between one-fifth and one-third of participants who had never been infected, according to the study. But symptoms were particularly less common in other people who had already had covid: Those participants were more likely to report 24 of the 26 symptoms tracked in the study.
Of those already with Covid cases, 6% said in their latest follow-up survey that they had not fully recovered and 42% said they had only partially recovered.
Dr. Pell said she is still reading the trajectory of prolonged covid symptoms over the months and years since an infection. But the new study has opened a small window into this question. People said their symptoms improved over time, while about 11 percent said they got worse.
“Some disappear over time,” Dr. Al-Aly said, “but there are also a smart number of other people who remain symptomatic with a bunch of manifestations for longer periods of time. “
Only a small portion of the study participants, about four percent, had been vaccinated before the infections and many of them had gained a dose.
“We are now very dependent on vaccination,” Dr. Pell said, “which confers some protection, but it’s not absolute. “
Women, the elderly and others living in poorer spaces also faced more severe sequelae from the infection. The same happened with those with pre-existing physical conditions, in addition to respiratory diseases and depression.
About nine out of 10 study participants were white, making it difficult how and why covid risks might have differed between racial and ethnic groups.
For fitness systems still suffering from recent Covid outbreaks while facing a flood of flu and other respiratory illnesses, far more resources are needed to treat patients with a previous coronavirus infection, scientists said.
“Our systems are prepared,” Dr. Al-Aly said.
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