By Brenda Goodman, CNN
Repeatedly catching COVID-19 results in increasing a person’s chances of facing new lasting health problems after infection, according to the first study on health risks of reinfection.
The study, which is found in the physical activity records of more than 5. 6 million other people treated in the VA physical activity system, found that, for those who had only one COVID-19 infection, those who had two or more documented infections had more than twice the risk of dying and three times the risk of being hospitalized within six months of their last infection. They also had increased risks of lung and central problems, fatigue, digestive and kidney disorders, diabetes, and neurological problems.
The findings come as a new wave of coronavirus variants, adding Omicron’s BA. 5, has dominated the United States and Europe, causing an additional buildup of cases and hospitalizations. BA. 5 caused about 54 percent of national cases last week, doubling its percentage of COVID-19 transmission in the past two weeks, according to data released Tuesday by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. USA
BA. 5 carries key mutations that evade antibodies generated through past vaccinations and infections, leaving many other people vulnerable to reinfection.
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at the University of Washington in St. Louis led the research, which was published as a preprint before the peer review. He said he did so after seeing reinfections become less unusual in his own patients. .
“If you had asked me about reinfection possibly a year and a half ago, I would tell you that I would possibly have a patient here or there, but it is very rare,” Al-Aly said. However, that is no longer true.
“So we asked an undeniable question: if you’ve already contracted Covid and are now in your moment of infection, does that pose a risk?And the undeniable answer is that it is. “
Al-Aly and his team compared the fitness records of more than 250,000 people who tested positive for covid-19 once with the records of another 38,000 who had two or more covid-19 infections documented in their medical records. More than 5. 3 million other people with no history of COVID-19 infection were used as a group.
Of those who became inflamed again, another 36,000 people had two COVID-19 infections, about 2,200 had been infected with covid-19 three times and 246 had become inflamed four times.
Common new diagnoses after reinfections included chest pain, central rhythms, central attacks, inflammation of the central muscle or sac around the central, central insufficiency, and blood clots. Common lung disorders included shortness of breath, lack of oxygen in the blood, lung disease, and fluid buildup around the lungs, Al-Aly said.
The study found that the risk of a new fitness problem is highest when a reinfection with Covid-19 occurs, but also persisted for at least six months. each next infection.
Al-Aly said that this is not what other people think will happen when they have covid for the first time or for the third time.
“There’s a concept that if you’ve had covid before, your immune formula is trained to recognize it and you’re more supplied to fight it, and if you get it again, maybe it won’t affect you as much, but it’s not really true,” he said.
Al-Aly said this doesn’t mean there aren’t other people who have had covid and done very well; there are many of them. On the contrary, what their study shows is that infection carries a new threat, and that threat builds up over time, he said.
Even if a user is likely to develop lasting health problems at a time of infection like their first infection, he said, they still rank with a 50 percent higher risk of disorders than a user who hasn’t contracted Covid-19 a year. moment time.
The study has some important caveats. Al-Aly says it’s more common to see reinfections in other people who had existing risks due to their age or underlying physical condition. random neither.
“It’s possible that other, sicker people or other people with immune disorders have an increased risk of reinfection and adverse health effects after reinfection,” Al-Aly said.
He was not interested in trying to isolate the natural effects of reinfection, but sought to perceive how infections recur in other people who get them.
“The applicable maximum for people’s lives is if they are reinfected, if this increases their threat of acute headaches and prolonged covid, and the answer is obviously yes and yes,” he said.
The test is observational, which means it cannot cause and effect.
Al-Aly says researchers saw those dangers higher even after weighing the knowledge to account for the effects of the person’s age, gender, drug use and underlying physical condition before they caught covid-19.
Experts who weren’t involved in the studies say it’s compelling.
“There’s this concept that I think a lot of other people have that ‘if I have my first infection, it’s going to be really good in the moment. Actually, there shouldn’t be any problem,'” said Dr. Daniel Griffin, instructor. in clinical medicine at Columbia University.
“The conventional wisdom, on the right, is that reinfections are benign, nothing to worry about, nothing to look at here,” Griffin said of the test on the “This Week in Virology” podcast. But it is not confirmed, he said.
That’s not how it has to work. Even when viruses change shape, as with the flu, our immune formula remains reminiscent of how to recognize and fight some of them. They can still make us sick, but the idea is that our past immunity is there to mount some kind of defense and save you from serious harm.
With coronaviruses, and in particular sars-CoV-2 coronaviruses, the blows keep coming.
“A year later, you may be reinfected with the same coronavirus for a moment. It’s clear that infection right now may be more benign, as coronaviruses have the inherent ability to interfere with lifelong immunity,” Griffin told CNN.
Griffin says he’s noticed covid-19 reinfections happen either way. Sometimes the second or third is softer for your patients, but this is not the case.
How does this compare to respiratory infections?
At the beginning of the pandemic, other people were catching covid and it took three months when they were fairly well protected, he said. But now those reinfections are more frequent, no doubt because of the immediate adjustments of the virus. He says he has noticed other people inflamed four times in the past two years.
“We don’t see that with the flu,” Griffin said.
As for what other people deserve to face this threat now, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says Americans are done with the pandemic. This does not mean that the pandemic is over with us.
Osterholm said he had three close friends who recently went to the restaurant for the first time since the pandemic began. All tested positive within 72 hours of the restaurant.
If you’re more at risk of getting seriously ill or just need to get sick, now is a smart time to wear an N95 mask in public places, he says.
“People don’t need to hear it, but that’s the reality. We’re seeing this resurgence and we’re seeing an increasing number of vaccine failures. Obviously, this is a primary concern,” he said.
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