A survey of long-haul travelers revealed 66 symptoms that lasted for more than 6 months. Fatigue and brain fog were the most common.

• Researchers at University College London say there may be as many as 203 symptoms linked to a long COVID.

• In a survey of more than 3,600 long-haul travelers, fatigue and brain fog were frequently reported.

• The head of research said there could be “thousands of long COVID patients suffering in silence.”

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Long-haul travelers can experience as many as 203 different symptoms, according to a new survey.

An article published Thursday in Lancet’s EClinicaMedicine describes the results of a survey of 3,672 people from the Body Politic COVID-19 support group. Adults from more than 50 countries responded to the survey, which included 257 questions about the nature of long-lasting COVID symptoms and the impact of these symptoms on people’s daily lives.

UCL researchers defined long COVID as “a set of symptoms that develop during or as a result of a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19 that has lasted for more than 28 days.” But the team documented a set of 66 symptoms that lasted for up to seven months. The three symptoms reported by patients to be the most debilitating were fatigue, breathing problems, and brain fog.

Within the investigation group, 2,454 long-haul travelers reported having symptoms for six months or more. The most common were general fatigue, fatigue after exercise, brain fog, headaches, and memory loss. Of those respondents who reported experiencing brain fog, memory loss, or both, 85% said these symptoms affected their ability to work. The study authors reported that around 45% of respondents said they needed a reduced work schedule, and an additional 22% were not working at the time of the survey due to illness.

Other symptoms reported in the survey included: visual hallucinations, tremors, itchy skin, changes in menstrual cycle, sexual dysfunction, heart palpitations, bladder control problems, shingles, blurred vision, diarrhea and tinnitus.

Dr Athena Akrami, a neuroscientist at University College London who led the research, said in a statement that there are “likely tens of thousands of long COVID patients suffering in silence, unsure whether their symptoms are COVID-related -19 “.

The story continues

Real-world data from the UK in June estimated that one in three people who contract symptomatic COVID-19 develop a long-term COVID, although this analysis defined the disease as symptoms lasting more than 12 weeks.

Read more: Experts explain why mRNA technology that revolutionized COVID-19 vaccines could be the answer to incurable diseases, heart attacks and even snakebites: “The possibilities are endless”

The recent investigation adds to a growing body of research that attempts to characterize the lengthy COVID. A group of scientists from Imperial College London said Monday that laboratory studies have shown blood samples from people with the disease contain “autoantibodies” that mistakenly attack healthy cells in the body. This may be one of the causes of the long symptoms of COVID, they said.

But the survey results also contain caveats. For example, this did not require all respondents to show test results proving they had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 43% of respondents had been diagnosed with another medical condition after their coronavirus infection. . Additionally, the majority of respondents were white (78%), most were female (84.5%), and almost all were from English-speaking countries – around 41% were Americans and 35% were British, the authors of the report said. the study.

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