Not all patients are completely healthy and well again after a corona infection. Some suffer from long-term effects, also known as long covid. Researchers in Germany wanted to find out how many people suffer from such symptoms after an infection.
A full 40 percent of those infected with corona still have long-covid-like symptoms six months after the infection. This affects both people who are knowingly infected and people who are unknowingly infected, said study director Philipp Wild from the Mainz University Medical Center. He presented the first results on the long-term effects of the Sars-Cov-2 infection.
For the study, 10,250 people between 25 and 88 years of age were examined. To a large extent, the researchers were able to fall back on data that had already been collected in advance. The participants included knowingly and unknowingly infected people as well as people without an infection.
The more symptoms, the higher the likelihood of long covid
A key finding: around one in three infected people stated that they had not yet returned to their original level of performance before the pandemic. 29.8 percent of those knowingly infected and 22.4 percent of those unknowingly infected reported it.
At the same time, however, 22 percent of people who had not gone through an infection said they felt less healthy than before the pandemic and experienced symptoms. The reason for this is that the most common long-covid symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath or fatigue are so unspecific, said Wild. There is still no uniform clinical pattern.
According to the study, there is a connection between Long Covid and acute infection: the more symptoms occur during the acute illness, the higher the likelihood that Long Covid symptoms will follow. Most complaints decrease over time. “Many of the complaints will subside, but there remains a group that has permanent complaints,” said Wild.
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Effects of Long-Covid now in focus
According to the information, women are more often affected by Long Covid than men. However, there is no age relationship – older people are not affected significantly more often than younger people.
According to the information, 61.9 percent of the study participants knew of their infection at the start of the examinations, 35.1 percent did not. More than 90 percent of all infected people had not required medical treatment, 3.5 percent were treated on an outpatient basis, and a further 5.8 percent were inpatient.
In the knowingly infected, the disease progression remained mild at 51.9 percent; 6.9 percent had no symptoms. In the unknowingly infected, 48.2 percent of the cases were mild. However, every fourth person knowingly infected and every fifth person unknowingly infected suffered moderate or severe impairments.
The researchers want to investigate the effects of Long Covid in another study. Among other things, they want to clarify whether corona vaccinations can protect against the long-term consequences. The first results are expected in the second quarter of 2022. (AFP / jmh)
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