Wollongong researcher Stuart Tan finds majority of study participants still struggle with long COVID

Before Giuliano Gaspri caught COVID-19, he was climbing up transmitter towers overlooking the New South Wales Illawarra region as part of his full-time maintenance job.

Three years on, the Corrimal resident is navigating a new way of life with 57 per cent lung capacity, among other ongoing health complications.

“It’s been something I have been pondering for quite some time — why I got so sick. I guess I was just unlucky because all I was was a type 2 diabetic,” he said.

The now-66-year-old is one of 339 people involved in a nationwide study published in the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) Internal Medicine Journal (IMJ) this week, which found up to half of its participants were still struggling with one or more symptoms 12-months post-infection.

However, the study also found symptoms reduced over time.

The Delta strain had just landed on Australian shores when Mr Gaspri felt breathless and was rushed to hospital, where he stayed for eight months.

“And out of those eight months, it was 155 days in ICU,” he said.

Mr Gaspri and his wife Rosie contracted COVID-19 at the same time, but she only experienced short-term gastrointestinal symptoms and high-temperatures.

“Certain things still don’t smell right to me now,” Mrs Gaspri said.

Meanwhile, her husband “had to start to walk again, strengthen up muscle mass and bring dependency on oxygen down as much as possible to come out of hospital”.

Cause still unknown

Mr Gaspri’s experience with COVID-19 is among the most extreme cases.

The study was led by Stuart Tan, a specialist physician in trauma and rehabilitation medicine at the New South Wales Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District.

He said he found in participant reports females and younger people were more likely to experience lingering symptoms in all systems of the body.

“Now we know COVID affects every system of the body,” Dr Tan said.

Self-enrolled participants, who contracted COVID after July 2020, including some of whom were hospitalised and unvaccinated, were asked to complete a symptomology survey during infection as well as every three months afterwards.

“Unfortunately, we still don’t know the cause and mechanisms of long COVID,” Dr Tan said.

“However, individuals who were vaccinated before they caught COVID tend to have less symptoms and tend to [report having] recovered faster.”

‘It just takes time’

Dr Tan believes early health guidelines of COVID-19, which classify patients as having recovered if they are symptom-free for three consecutive days, do not reflect what GPs are seeing in their practices.

“One of the advantages of our study is that we started at the beginning of the pandemic and were able to capture the three main strains, all [of which] can cause long COVID symptoms,” he said.

Fatigue, memory and concentration difficulties and shortness of breath were the most common long COVID symptoms reported.

“But the reality is that treatment [for these symptoms] has to be individualised,” Dr Tan said.

“There are lots of treatments [for long COVID] around but no evidence that one works better than the other.”

But Dr Tan believes there is hope for the significant number of patients experiencing long COVID, after observing a 22 per cent drop in reported symptomology across the 3-12-month post-infection period.

“The positive finding from this study is that long COVID symptoms [for individuals can] become less prevalent with time,” he said.

“It is important to realise there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

‘Virus never went away’

Professor Anthony Byrne, who leads the Long COVID Respiratory Clinic at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said Dr Tan’s study showed that a reasonable number of once high functioning people had been unable to return to their usual level of function.

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