Can a long Covid be deadly?New analysis suggests that it is possible

It is unclear whether the deceased had a fundamental health problem, whether Covid was the cause of their death for a long time, or whether it was a factor.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association provides new data as state and federal health authorities are working to understand the importance and severity of long Covids. Two years after the pandemic, little is known about Covid’s long prevalence, diagnostic methods, or treatment best practices.

“The overall risk factor for mortality with long COVIDs is important and will evolve,” said Mady Hornig, a physician scientist at Columbia University’s Merman School of Public Health, who has been studying Covid for a long time. I am. While the CDC is still collecting and revising data, the NCHS has so far 60 death certificates listing long Covid or similar terms (eg, “post-Covid”) in 2021 and 2022. We have identified an additional 60 death certificates in the first five months of the year.

A CDC spokesperson said the agency “… is working to identify deaths caused by the long Covid-19” and will “immediately” announce the number.

There is no long Covid test and there is no official definition in the CDC and the medical community. However, healthcare professionals across the country are diagnosing patients previously infected with Covid-19 based on a variety of symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, and brain fog.Researchers and scientists say that Between 10 and 30 percent Many people who survive a Covid-19 infection develop long-term Covid. A CDC study released on May 27 One in five adults in the United States said they could develop this condition.

Still, it is difficult to determine exactly how many people in a country have a long Covid. Diagnosing a condition is not easy without a universal definition. Long Covid can affect multiple organ systems, which may be a long Covid symptom for one patient and not for another.

The muddy diagnostic process makes it difficult for researchers to study long Covids. Dozens of hospitals and clinics accept patients with long-term Covid symptoms for treatment and use the data to better understand their condition and why they have previously been infected with the virus but do not show up to others. I’m trying to understand it well.Supervised by the National Institutes of Health Long Covid’s largest national survey..

In October 2021, after CDC approval, US hospitals and healthcare facilities began tracking patients with long Covid symptoms using specific identification information called the ICD-10 code. Its coding system, used for most reportable illnesses, helped researchers narrow down which group of people they study.

However, in almost all cases, the population of long Covid samples is limited, limiting the ability of researchers to understand how conditions affect different people.

Sairam Parthasarathy, Head of Lungs at the University of Arizona School of Medicine and one of Covid’s long-term research leaders, said: “It’s tied to health literacy … Someone is aware that they have a medical problem. Sometimes they don’t seek care if someone feels they don’t have a medical problem. maybe.”

Socio-economic factors are also involved, Parthasarathy said, including whether someone has the resources and time to go to the doctor.

There is no clear wording or term that hospitals use on death certificates — the CDC has not yet issued guidance. Therefore, there is no official estimate for Covid’s long-term death.

Few studies have investigated the relationship between long Covid and mortality.However, November 1, 2021 European Cancer Patient StudyPublished in The Lancet, has shown a relationship between long Covids and morbidity in the sample population. The study found that about 15% of people who survived Covid-19 showed long Covid symptoms, with significantly worse survival results. We also found that these individuals were more likely to permanently discontinue systemic anticancer therapy.

Jerry Krishnan, a lung physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who leads the university’s long-term Covid clinical research, said: “I haven’t seen the data, but I’ve heard that people developed heart or lung or brain complications after having Covid, and eventually they died.”

CDC analysis has obtained a death certificate containing words such as “long Covid” and “post Covid”. This may indicate that someone died as a result of the condition. When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, NCHS conducted a similar review of death certificates. The CDC finally informed health care providers to use certain codes for possible deaths due to Covid-19. This allowed federal and local researchers to study how and whether the virus caused and did cause more serious illness in some groups than in others.

There is no long Covid death certificate code, but Parthasarathy relies on the medical community already knowing how severe Covid-19 illnesses affect different populations against people in the same group. He said he could understand the impact of the long Covid.

“We know that people with color are unbalancedly affected by Covid’s disease, as opposed to mild SARS-CoV-2. infection. And we know that people who are hospitalized in Covid are more likely to have a long Covid, “he said. “When they showed those numbers … it was like’of course’. I was able to connect the dots.”