72% of patients with severe cases of COVID-19 have at least one symptom that persists for 6 months

A wide variety of symptoms persisted in more than 70% of COVID-19 patients months after recovery from the initial stages of the disease, determined a study conducted by researchers at the prestigious Stanford School of Medicine, California, United States.

Most research patients, one of the largest journals in scientific literature in this regard, they had been hospitalized due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Some of the most common persistent symptoms are shortness of breath, fatigue and trouble sleeping. In all, 84 different clinical signs and symptoms have been reported, including loss of taste and smell, cognitive impairment such as memory loss and difficulty concentrating, depression, anxiety, chest pain and fever.

“The findings raise concerns about a huge public health burden if even a portion of these patients require continued care.“he claimed Steven goodman, clinical essayist, epidemiologist, biostatistician, professor of epidemiology, population health and medicine at Stanford and lead author of the study.

“Around 70% of those recovering from moderate to severe COVID-19 have persistent symptomsIt’s a huge sum, ”Goodman said.

The study was published on May 26 in JAMA network open, under the paternity of Tahmina Nasserie, Michael Hittle and Goodman.

An incredible number of symptoms

“The number of symptoms that are part of what is now known as prolonged COVID is staggering,” Goodman warned, adding that the review found big differences in study design and quality, making the results difficult to compare, but it remains clear that the problem of persistent symptoms is significant. The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a recent initiative to study COVID-19 in the long term.

The researchers collected and analyzed the results of 45 different studies published in English between January 2020 and March 2021.. The studies included a total of 9,751 patients diagnosed with COVID-19, 83% of whom had been hospitalized. Goodman said little research is available on post-COVID-19 symptoms in people with milder cases, but two studies, involving 214 outpatients, showed high frequencies of persistent symptoms.

A total of 84 different clinical signs and symptoms have been reported.

For its review, the authors defined persistent symptoms as those that last for at least 60 days after diagnosis, onset of symptoms or admission to hospital, or at least 30 days after recovery from acute illness or discharge from hospital. Most studies followed patients for up to three months, but some followed patients for six months.

“We did this study because there has been a lot of commentary and scientific articles on the symptoms of COVID over the long term.“, He explained Tahmina Nasserie, who is an epidemiologist at Stanford. “But few had studied the scientific evidence deeply enough to show the full range, how long it lasted, and who it affected.”

The authors noted that 72.5% of study participants reported at least one persistent symptom. Rates were also high in two six-month studies. The symptoms indicated that a variety of systems in the body were affected, including the heart, respiratory, neuromuscular, neurological, circulatory and immune systems, Nasserie said.

Shortness of breath, fatigue and difficulty sleeping

The most common symptoms were shortness of breath, fatigue, exhaustion, and difficulty sleeping. “The figures are very shocking, especially with regard to fatigue and shortness of breath,” Nasserie warned. “These were pretty debilitating symptoms, and some people reported having difficulty climbing stairs.” About 40% of patients reported experiencing fatigue, 36% reported experiencing shortness of breath, and 29% reported experiencing trouble sleeping.. Depression and anxiety, as well as pain and discomfort, were also relatively common: About 20% of patients described these symptoms. About 25% of patients reported an inability to concentrate, commonly referred to as “brain fog”.

As an epidemiologist studying disease trends, Goodman said he was increasingly concerned about the lingering effects of COVID-19 in early fall 2020, when news of patients was called “long-haul carriers of the coronavirus”And reported a variety of unusual symptoms after recovery from the acute phase of the disease.

“At first we completely ignored the long term consequences of illness with this virus,” Goodman said. “People were told it was all in their heads. The question now is not whether this is real, but how big the problem is“, to complain.

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