What are the 55 symptoms to consider when detecting prolonged COVID

Most people who contract the coronavirus get over the picture without complications. But after this acute phase of the disease, symptoms may appear which turn into sequelae. Some of these patients feel the Post COVID or prolonged COVID like a roller coaster that does not give a truce. A review of scientific studies conducted in the United States has identified that there are 55 long-term effects that can appear after developing COVID-19 disease.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Department of Neuroscience in Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York and the Methodist Research Institute in Houston, United States, with the collaboration of scientists from Mexico and Sweden. It was published in Scientific reports from the magazine group Nature. Scientists suggest that the public and the medical industry should pay attention to the onset of symptoms so that those affected can access timely care.

Lead author Dr Sonia Villapol and its collaborators detected more than 50 long-term effects of COVID-19 among the 47,910 patients included in the analysis. At the top of the list, they placed persistent symptoms, which range from mild to debilitating and last for weeks to months after initial recovery.

The most common symptom of prolonged COVID is fatigue. They detected it in 58% of the patients they studied. Second, they identified headaches (44%). Then, less frequently, the symptoms identified were disturbance in attention (27%), hair loss (25%), shortness of breath (24%), loss of taste (23%) and loss of mind. smell (21%).

Other symptoms were related to lung disease, such as cough, chest discomfort, reduced lung diffusion capacity, sleep apnea, and pulmonary fibrosis; cardiovascular problems, such as arrhythmias and myocarditis; and nonspecific problems, such as tinnitus and night sweats. Researchers they were surprised to also find a prevalence of neurological symptoms, such as dementia, depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

To assess these long-term effects of COVID-19, the research team identified a total of 18,251 publications, 15 of which met the inclusion criteria for their study. Peer-reviewed studies published in other peer-reviewed journals have been conducted in the United States, Europe, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Egypt and Mexico. and consisted of data published before 2021, following patient cohorts ranging from 102 to 44,799 adults aged 17 to 87 years.

The studies collected information from self-reported patient surveys, medical records, and clinical evaluations, with a post-COVID-19 follow-up time ranging from 14 to 110 days. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients accounted for 40% of the studies, with the remainder being a combination of mild, moderate and severe COVID-19 patients.

The research team conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of these studies to estimate the prevalence of all symptoms, Abnormal signs or laboratory parameters that extend beyond the acute phase of COVID-19. They measured various biomarkers, such as an abnormal chest x-ray or CT scan, the risk of blood clots, the presence of inflammation, anemia, and indicators of possible heart failure, bacterial infection and damage. pulmonary. They found that 80% of recovered adults exhibited at least one long-term symptom lasting weeks to months after mild, moderate or severe acute infection with COVID-19.

In all, The team identified 55 persistent abnormal symptoms, signs and lab results, with most of the lingering effects similar to symptoms developed during the acute phase of COVID-19. By identifying these same lingering effects in multiple countries, the researchers say their study confirms that the burden of prolonged COVID (also known as long COVID) is considerable and underscores the urgency of recognizing these chronic complications, communicating them clearly to the community, and to define therapeutic treatments. strategies to avoid the long-term consequences of COVID-19.

“The coronavirus continues to confuse,” he commented Infobae Dr Mario Boskis, who is the coordinator of the scientific councils of the Argentine Society of Cardiology and monitors patients with prolonged COVID. “The fact that there are patients who remain symptomatic beyond two weeks after infection, with physical changes such as shortness of breath, fatigue, headaches or psychological disturbances such as attention, depression or anxiety, shows us that we still don’t know the potential damage from coronavirus infection. Among people who have not been hospitalized, prolonged COVID can develop between 10 and 35% ”.

The mechanisms by which the coronavirus continues to affect in the long term are still being investigated, Boskis said. “There is no doubt that the sequelae in the lungs or in other organs like the heart or the brain explain part of the chronic symptoms, but Among the 55 symptoms described in this important review study conducted among scientists in the United States, Sweden and Mexico, we observe that disorders such as chronic fatigue, or loss of attention and memory, which they are difficult to explain when they are present beyond three months after discharge, and often with normal clinical studies “, said the cardiologist.

For the next few months, Scientists from the United States, Mexico and Sweden will conduct a new phase of their research, which will focus on determining what makes some people more susceptible to prolonged COVID. In the study led by Dr Villapol, Sandra López-León, of the company Novartis Pharmaceuticals; Talia Wegman-Ostrosky, from the National Cancer Institute of Mexico; Carol Perelman, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico; Rosalinda Sepúlveda, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; Paulina A. Rebolledo, of Emory University; and Angélica Cuapio, from the Carolina Institute of Sweden.

To avoid prolonged COVID, Doctors recommend monitoring chinstrap use, cross ventilation in confined spaces, and distancing to reduce the risk of contagion of the coronavirus. “What there is no doubt is that anyone who has suffered the COVID-19 disease, no matter how severely it has occurred, should get a medical consultation to make sure they don’t there was no sequel that could be treated. in order to avoid complications “recommended Dr Boskis.

In addition, other tips for avoiding the syndrome are vaccination against COVID-19. A study published yesterday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases revealed that vaccines reduce the risk of prolonged COVID. In this work, The risk of contracting COVID in the long term (when symptoms persist 28 days after infection) was found to be halved in people vaccinated with the full regimen.

This work also highlighted that the chance that people vaccinated with the full regimen will be hospitalized when they contract the virus is reduced by more than 70% compared to those who are not vaccinated. The results published by the experts in charge of the “Zoe Covid” investigation also revealed that those who test positive after being vaccinated with both doses (post-vaccination infection) are almost twice as likely to be completely asymptomatic. .

In China, where the coronavirus pandemic began, a few days ago they published work on people affected by prolonged COVID. While most symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus disease in hospitalized patients resolved within 12 months, about half of those hospitalized continued to have at least one persistent symptom.

The study was carried out on 1,276 patients discharged from the public hospital in the city of Wuhan in China, where the COVID-19 pandemic originated, and published in the journal The Lancet. Research reported that nearly one in three patients suffered from shortness of breath, while one in five said they still felt fatigue and muscle weakness. He also found that women were twice as likely to suffer from lung dysfunction as men. In addition, they were 1.4 times more likely to report fatigue or muscle weakness, twice as likely to report anxiety or depression, and almost three times more likely to have impaired pulmonary diffusion after 12 month.

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