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The Research paper is a brief overview of some interesting scholarly work.
The big idea
Even mild cases of COVID-19 can have major and lasting effects on people’s health. This is one of the main conclusions of our recent multi-country study on long COVID-19 – or long COVID – recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Long COVID is set than the continuation or development of symptoms three months after initial infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These symptoms last for at least two months after their onset without further explanation.
We found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive issues such as brain fog — or a combination thereof — that affected day-to-day functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women are twice as likely as men and four times as likely as children to develop long COVID.
We analyzed data from 54 studies involving more than one million people from 22 countries who experienced symptoms of COVID-19. We counted the number of people with COVID-19 who developed clusters of new, long-term COVID-19 symptoms and determined how their risk of developing the disease varied by age, gender, and health status. hospitalization for COVID-19.
We found that patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had a greater risk of developing long-lasting COVID – and having longer-lasting symptoms – compared to people who had not been hospitalized. However, since the vast majority of COVID-19 cases do not require hospitalization, many other long COVID cases have arisen from these milder cases despite their lower risk. Among all people with long-term COVID, our study found that nearly one in seven people still had these symptoms a year later, and researchers don’t yet know how many of these cases may become chronic.
The long COVID can affect almost every organ in the body.
why is it important
Compared to COVID-19, Relatively little is known about the long COVID.
Our systematic, multi-country analysis of this condition has provided results that shed light on the potentially high human and economic costs of prolonged COVID around the world. Many people who live with the condition are working age adults. Inability to work for several months could lead to loss of income, livelihood and housing. For parents or caregivers living with long COVID, the condition may leave them unable to care for loved ones.
We believe, based on the pervasiveness and severity of the long COVID, that it is keeping people out of work and therefore contributing to labor shortages. The long COVID could also be a factor in how people lose their jobs has disproportionately affected women.
We believe that finding effective and affordable treatments for people living with long-term COVID should be a priority for researchers and research funders. Long COVID clinics have opened for provide specialized carebut the treatments they offer are limited, inconsistent and can be expensive.
And after
Long COVID is a complex and dynamic condition – some symptoms go away, then come back and new symptoms appear. But researchers don’t yet know why.
Although our study focused on the three most common symptoms associated with prolonged COVID that affect daily functioning, the condition can also include symptoms such as loss of smell and taste, insomnia, gastrointestinal issues stomachaches and headaches, among others. But in most cases, these additional symptoms occur along with the main symptoms for which we have made estimates.
There are many unanswered questions about what predisposes people to long COVID. For example, how different risk factors, including smoking and high body mass index, influence the likelihood of developing the disease? Does he get reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 change the risk of long COVID? Additionally, it is unclear how long COVID protection changes over time after a person has been vaccinated or boosted against COVID-19.
The COVID-19 variants also present new puzzles. Researchers know that the omicron version is less lethal than previous strains. Early evidence shows lower risk of long COVID of omicron compared to earlier strains, but much more data is needed.
Most of the people we studied were infected with the virus more lethal variants that were circulating before omicron became dominant. We will continue to build on our research on the long COVID as part of the Global burden of disease study – which makes estimates of death and disability from all diseases and injuries in all countries around the world – to get a clearer picture of how the long-term toll of COVID-19 has changed once omicron arrived.
Sarah Wolf Hanson is Principal Investigator of Global Health Metrics, University of Washington and Theo Vos is Professor of Metric Health Sciences, University of Washington
This article is republished from Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read it original article.
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