Mild Covid long-term symptoms resolve within a year, study says

CNN
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For mild cases of Covid-19, the majority of long-term symptoms of Covid resolve within a year after infection, according to a large study conducted in Israel.

“Mild illness does not lead to severe or chronic long-term morbidity in the majority of patients,” said study co-author Barak Mizrahi, a senior fellow at the KI Research Institute at Kfar Malal, in an email. said in

the study, Published Wednesday in the journal The BMJ, Thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated people with mild COVID-19 symptoms who were not hospitalized were compared with those who tested negative for the virus. Long Covid was defined as symptoms that persisted or appeared for more than 4 weeks after her initial Covid-19 infection.

“We find this study encouraging in that most ongoing post-COVID symptoms improve in the first few months after an acute infection,” said Penn Medicine, director of the Post-COVID Evaluation and Recovery Clinic. One Dr. Benjamin Abramov said in an email. He was not involved in research.

But it’s not for everyone. Abramov said his clinic continues to see many patients with severe, long-term Covid symptoms lasting more than a year after infection.

“This is especially true for those who have sustained severe symptoms early after acute infection,” he said. American Society of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Long-Term Covid Collaboration.

Dr. Jonathan Whiteson, associate professor of rehabilitation medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, sees the same thing in his clinic.

“Many patients from the ‘first wave’ of COVID who developed mild to moderate acute COVID (and were not hospitalized) were never hospitalized and nearly three years later,” Whiteson said in an email. continue to see severe persistent and limiting symptoms,” Whiteson said in an email. He was not involved in the study.

Israeli researchers analyzed the medical records of about 300,000 people diagnosed with mild cases of Covid-19 and compared their health status in the following year to about 300,000 people without Covid-19. The average age of those who tested positive for COVID-19 was her 25, and 51% were women.

Researchers looked for 65 conditions associated with Covid over time and divided them into two time frames. Late, or 180-360 days after infection.

After controlling for age, sex, alcohol and tobacco use, pre-existing conditions, and different variants of Covid-19, the researchers found that brain fog, loss of smell and taste, breathing problems, dizziness and weakness, and heart palpitations I found a serious risk such as. Both early and late streptococcal throat.

According to the researchers, chest pain, coughing, hair loss, muscle and joint pain, and respiratory illness were significantly increased only in the early stages.

Difficulty breathing was the most common complaint, according to the study. While the study found that getting vaccinated reduced the risk of respiratory problems, the researchers found that vaccinated individuals “compared to unvaccinated infected patients with other There is a similar risk of outcome”.

Dr Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, said in a statement, “The large scale of the study suggests changes in the prevalence of symptoms over time and other alternatives to persistent symptoms. We were able to look at the influence of factors.” .

“Although olfactory deficits usually resolved by about nine months, changes in concentration and memory tended to be more persistent.

The study found only minor differences between men and women, but children had fewer early symptoms than adults, and by the end of the year they were mostly gone. March 2020 November 2020), Alpha variant (January 2021 until April 2021) and Delta variants (until July 2021) until October 2021).

“Patients with mild Covid-19 were at increased risk for a small number of health outcomes, few symptoms persisted for 1 year after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and risk decreased over time from infection,” Mizrahi said. said in an e-mail.

However, “We do not claim that there are no patients suffering from long-lasting COVID symptoms such as dyspnea (dyspnea). Weakness, cognitive impairment, etc.,” he added. “[Our study]is consistent with the evidence that a minority of patients suffer from long-term symptoms, as seen in this analysis.”

The researchers noted certain limitations of the study, including possible diagnostic errors and the inability to record some mild symptoms over time.

“This design of the study fails to detect the severity of these symptoms and uses medical coding to detect persistent COVID symptoms, so other patients may be missed.” Abramov said.

It may also be difficult to apply the results of this study to other countries, such as the United States, because of the way doctors code symptoms differently. They were unable to identify some of the conditions seen, said Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at UT Health’s Long School of Medicine in San Antonio.

“The most common symptom of Long COVID was fatigue, which was not on this list. Also missing were post-exercise malaise, dysautonomia/POTS, or ME/CFS. are some of the major conditions seen in my clinic population, so the lack of these results is a major limitation of this study,” said Verduzco-Gutierrez, who was not involved in the new study. says Mr.

fatigue after exercise Even after minimal effort, overwhelming fatigue. Unlike normal fatigue, recovery can take days or weeks, and if activity is resumed too soon, fatigue can recur.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) is a rapid increase in heart rate after sitting or standing that can cause dizziness and fainting. a kind of autonomic neuropathy Disorders of the autonomic nervous system. “Normally, there is no cure for dysautonomia.” According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or ME/CFS, is a serious, long-term illness characterized by extreme fatigue that does not improve with rest. This condition can affect sleep and thought processes, cause pain in many parts of the body, and prevent people from doing most of their daily activities.

In response to this concern, Mizrahi told CNN: He further said that dysautonomia/POTS was not included in the study as it is only assigned to the International Classification of Diseases or the ICD Medical Code as of October 2022.

However, symptoms of POTS and other conditions could have been included in more general categories such as arrhythmias and palpitations, he said.

Additionally, Mizrahi said studies have coded fatigue under “weakness.” In fact, researchers found his second most common symptom reported in the study to be muscle weakness, which he continued to haunt people from age 19 to age 60 for months.