Sick for the long haul: One third of COVID-19 patients have symptoms for eight months [Australian research]

[Murph]

https://www.theage.com.au/national/...ymptoms-for-eight-months-20210330-p57fbl.html

By Kate Aubusson
March 31, 2021 — 5.00am


One in three Australian COVID-19 patients is still battling symptoms eight months after being infected, and youth is no protection against the debilitating effects of ‘Long COVID’.
The landmark ADAPT study shows 32 per cent of 81 COVID-19 patients diagnosed at St Vincent’s Hospital’s testing clinics reported still feeling ill 240 days post-infection.

Derek Young, 55, is still feeling the effects of COVID-19 one year after he was infected with the virus. Credit:Nick Moir

An alarming one in five (19 per cent) still met the criteria for debilitating ‘Long COVID’ at the eight-month mark, experiencing fatigue, laboured breathing or tightness in their chest long after their infection had passed, the researchers at St Vincent’s and the Kirby Institute found.

Of the patients who met the criteria for ‘Long COVID’, almost half (46 per cent) said they had not fully recovered, the researchers reported in their paper published on Wednesday to the pre-print server medRxiv which is not yet peer-reviewed.

continues at link: https://www.theage.com.au/national/...ymptoms-for-eight-months-20210330-p57fbl.html

 

[Murph]

EDIT: Found the pre-print: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.29.21254211v1

If anyone can find the pre-print on medrxiv please link to it. I'm usually internet savvy but for some reason coming up blank! thanks!

 

[Murph]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.11.21253207v1.full-text

Here's another pre-print on long covid. It has really strong methods and finds 12% can't smell, 11% can't taste, 10% have fatigue, 9% have shortness of breath.

To me, this group needs to be split in three: physical damage group 1, whose smelling and tastign neurons are broken. Physical damage group 2, whose lungs are destroyed. and mystery damage group, who have fatigue. It is likely only the 3rd group overlaps substantially with me/cfs.

(Also, fatigue is a very broad descriptor, these long covid guys need better terminology. Who has PEM? is a better question.)

> We observed 442 and 353 patients over four and seven months after symptom onset, respectively

> Our cohort consists of mostly mild COVID-19 cases that have been prospectively followed for a median time of 6.8 months. At least one trained physician critically reviewed the patients’ reported symptoms at each visit. We assessed SARS-CoV-2 IgG at each visit to correlate reported symptoms with serological data. At 4 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, shortness of breath occurred in 8.6% (38/442), anosmia in 12.4% (55/442), ageusia in 11.1% (49/442), and fatigue in 9.7% (43/442) of patients. At least one characteristic symptom was present in 27.8% (123/442) and 34.8% (123/353) at months 4 and 7 post-infection, respectively.

 

[Hipsman]

Here's another pre-print on long covid. It has really strong methods and finds 12% can't smell, 11% can't taste, 10% have fatigue, 9% have shortness of breath.

Well it's been exactly 1 month since I got mild covid and I still can't smell shit...

 

[Martial]

I heard one in every 7 people in the Uk have developed long covid as well.

 

[pattismith]

I heard one in every 7 people in the Uk have developed long covid as well.

An immunologist in France said 10% but it's probably underestimated.

She said something interesting that correlates with what I understand about ME/CFS and long covid patients:

There is several types of patients with symptomatic covid:

-the ones that make severe form. They usually have strong innate immunity which is involved in their high inflammatory response.

-the ones that have mild/moderate covid.
These ones have weaker innate immunity (any defect in the complement system for example).

The long covid patients are in this group, especially in a subgroup with something wrong in their adaptative immunity (people that have tendency to allergies or autoimmune disease).

ME/CFS patients are in the same boat, research about long covid will help us a lot in the future I guess.

 

[Art Vandelay]

“These symptoms are probably a mixture of a whole range of things that happened to these people after [being infected with] the virus. Some people may have been traumatised by their COVID diagnoses and had predominantly mental health symptoms, some patients were really sick and needed ventilation and have lung injuries, middle-aged women may have an immune response,” he said.

This just demonstrates that Australian doctors are still in the dark ages when it comes to post-viral illnesses. We've already seen reports from longcovid patients here who have been mistreated by doctors. They are being told that they are 'deconditioned' and are being forced into graded exercise.

 

[JES]

I heard one in every 7 people in the Uk have developed long covid as well.

I read over a million experience long COVID symptoms, but there are 4.37 million COVID infections in UK, so it would actually indicate one in every fourth develop long COVID. But since lots of people get infected without getting a test done, it could be pretty close to one in seven.

Perhaps more meaningful would be to look at prevalence in overall population. Over a million of long COVID cases means almost 2% of population deal with or have dealt with long COVID. ME/CFS prevalence is around 0.5-1%, probably closer to 0.5%, so this is a pretty significant increase.