Study on older virus mutants Every eight infected people struggle with Long Covid
05/08/2022, 19:38
Difficulty breathing, loss of smell, exhaustion: these are some of the symptoms that people who have survived a corona infection complain about. According to one study, researchers are now quantifying the proportion of those affected by Covid-19 among those who were infected between March 2020 and August 2021.
Every eighth person infected with corona suffers from at least one symptom of Long Covid weeks or months after infection. This is the result of a large-scale study from the Netherlands, which was published in the specialist journal “The Lancet”. The researchers asked more than 76,400 adults to complete an online questionnaire about 23 common symptoms of Covid-19. Between March 2020 and August 2021, each participant answered the questionnaire 24 times.
During the study period, more than 4,200 or 5.5% of participants claimed to have been diagnosed with a corona infection. About one in five (21%) of those infected had at least one new or severely intensified symptom three to five months after infection. However, nearly nine percent of uninfected participants also reported a similar increase. According to the researchers, the data indicate that 12.7% of corona patients – that is, about one in eight – suffer from long-term complaints.
A special feature of the study is the large uninfected control group, with the data from which the researchers were able to distinguish between real late corona effects and general pandemic effects. Symptoms before and after infection were also recorded in those infected, allowing researchers to determine exactly which symptoms are related to the coronavirus. Common symptoms of Covid-19 are chest pain, difficulty breathing, muscle pain, loss of taste and smell, and general fatigue.
“By analyzing symptoms in an uninfected control group and in people before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection, we were also able to explain symptoms that could be due to other health aspects of the pandemic, such as stress, restrictions and uncertainties. “, said author Aranka Ballering of the University of Groningen.
Experts see study as “great progress”
However, the authors point out that the study does not include newer corona variants such as Delta or Omicron. Therefore, it also does not provide data on symptoms such as brain fog, which has only been considered a common sign of Long Covid since the emergence of the more recent variants. Future studies should therefore also examine psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety, as well as aspects such as mental confusion, insomnia and exhaustion, even after minimal physical exertion, recommended study author Judith Rosmalen.
Experts Christopher Brightling and Rachael Evans from the University of Leicester in the UK, who were not involved in the study, lauded the study as a “major advance” over previous studies on Long Covid. It is encouraging that “new data from other studies indicate that there is a lower rate of COVID in people vaccinated or infected with the omicron variant,” they wrote in The Lancet.