50% of mild, moderate COVID patients have symptoms after 6 months of study

Nearly half of people who get mild or moderate cases of COVID-19 still experience symptoms six months later, according to a new study published by Israeli researchers. Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, evaluated 103 people over the age of 18 who had coronavirus over a six-month period between April 2020 and October 2020. The people had mild to moderate symptoms, meaning that, while not asymptomatic, they were not hospitalized with a more serious case The participants were interviewed up to four times during the course of the study. “It is very frightening that after six months, young people who were healthy before the coronavirus and feeling well are still having symptoms,” said Dr. Sarah Israel of Hadassah. – University Medical Center, which helped write the report. After six months, 46% of the patients had at least one unresolved symptom, usually fatigue (22%), changes in smell and taste (15%), or breathing difficulties (8%). The study showed that 44% of the people had headaches. 41% fever, 39% muscle pain, and 38% dry cough as their first COVID symptom, usually around the second day of disease onset. But many of those symptoms disappeared relatively quickly. In contrast, odor and taste changes, which usually occurred around the fourth day after the onset of the disease, were among the longest lasting.

A total of 14 symptoms were included in the final analysis, of which 12 were listed as symptoms of COVID-19 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as of December 2020. These included taste change, odor change, fever, dryness. cough, productive cough, muscle pain, headache, runny nose, sore throat, diarrhea, breathing difficulties, vomiting and nausea. In addition, more than half of the participants (53%) complained of a non-CDC symptom: loss of appetite. Finally, fatigue, now listed as a CDC symptom, did not appear explicitly in the original questionnaire, but was self-reported under “any other symptoms” by 18% of patients. Dr. Israel said other symptoms mentioned by some patients included memory loss, hair loss, and depression – “many symptoms for which it’s hard to understand why patients had these post-COVID.” The report explained that “long COVID is emerging as a phenomenon in which patients have long-lasting unresolved symptoms. These may be long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19, or a post-COVID syndrome for which autonomic nervous system dysfunction has been proposed, although further investigation is necessary to determine the causes. ”As noted, in terms of underlying medical conditions, most patients were generally healthy before contracting the virus. Two of them had high blood pressure, six had respiratory disease, two heart disease, and 16 were clinically obese. The study had several limitations, the report explained, including that the data collection method used – calling patients at different intervals – can lead to recall bias. In addition, patients were recruited through social networks and word of mouth, forming a largely younger cohort with higher income and education levels. Israel said she hoped the information in the report would enable doctors to better understand the long term of COVID-19. term health complications. She also hopes it will encourage young people to get vaccinated. “I think people now know this is not an easy virus,” she said. Even if you hardly get sick, the virus can affect you for months afterwards. The chance of side effects from the vaccine is small compared to the symptoms of the virus. “Israel added that additional work needs to be done to evaluate whether asymptomatic patients experience similar symptoms after recovery. She also said the team hopes to continue examining the people involved in the current study to determine when their existing symptoms disappear.