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There is still a lot we don’t know about COVID-19, but one thing has become clear is that the novel coronavirus is not always a unique situation. COVID has the ability to re-infect people and leave some survivors with long term symptoms, known as “long COVID”. Persistent symptoms affect between 10% and 30% of people infected with the virus, experts say The Wall Street Journal. And now that we are almost 20 months into a pandemic, early survivors have shown that the long symptoms of COVID can last for over a year. But depending on your age, you may have a harder time getting rid of a particular lasting effect of the virus.
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A new September study published in the American Journal Otolaryngology found that a loss of smell or taste is more difficult for adults over 40 to regain after contracting COVID. The researchers spoke to nearly 800 respondents who had tested positive for the virus and were part of a COVID-19 investigation into loss of smell and taste that recorded symptoms 14 days, one month, three months, and six months after registration. According to the study, participants under the age of 40 regained their sense of smell at a higher rate than those over that age.
“Only age [below] Age 40 was positively associated with recovery of smell, ”the researchers noted. Among people over 40, more than 25 percent still reported having an abnormal sense of smell at the six-month follow-up. At the same time, more than 83 percent of those under 40 have regained their sense of smell.
“We have seen a recovery rate of about 80% over a period of six months or more. ” Evan reiter, MD, study co-investigator and medical director of the Smell and Taste Disorders Center at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health, said in a statement. “However, 20% is still a lot of people, given the millions of people who have been affected by COVID-19.”
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It is also not the first study to suggest that older people have a harder time with long symptoms of COVID. A September study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examined more than 350 people who tested positive for COVID between April 1 and December 10, 2020. They found that people over 40 were most at risk . for a long COVID, loss of taste and smell being two of the most common long-lasting symptoms, each reported by nearly 13% of patients two months after testing positive.
But it might not just be that the virus affects older people differently. People over 40 were also more likely to experience a change in their sense of smell and taste. before the pandemic. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), nearly one in four American adults over the age of 40 typically report an altered sense of smell, and one in five report some type of change in their sense of taste.
Experts at Harvard Medical School say that while there appears to be about a 60-80% chance of your smell or taste being restored after COVID, recovery for the elderly may take longer and be less than complete since these senses also decrease with age. . “For some people it is temporary, but for others it can be permanent”, Simone wildes, MD, an infectious disease physician at South Shore Health in Massachusetts, said United States today.
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