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More than half of patients with severe Covid had symptoms two years after infection: Study

Rajeev Choudhury

Even after two years of being discharged from hospital following severe infections of Covid-19, the patients still carry a high burden of symptomatic sequelae of the disease and more than half of them showed symptoms of long Covid-19, a new study by Chinese researchers has found.

The researchers of the study published recently in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine report that the Covid-19 survivors had a remarkably lower health status than the general population at 2 years, even though they were able to return to their previous work two years after being discharged from hospital.

The researchers of the study jointly led by Prof Bin Cao of  Beijing’s China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Prof Jianwei Wang of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences followed up with 1,192 people who had survived hospitalisation with Covid-19 and who had been discharged from Wuhan’s Jin Yin-tan Hospital between Jan 7 and May 29, 2020, at six months, one year and two years after discharge.

The most common post-Covid symptoms reported by the survivors were fatigue and muscle weakness, the researchers said.

However, the number of people reporting at least one sequelae decreased significantly from 68% at six months to 55% at two years, they wrote in the paper.

Similarly, the proportion of people reporting shortness of breath while walking briskly decreased by 12% from 26% reporting feeling short of breath at the six-month follow-up to 14% during the two-year follow-up, they further wrote in the paper.

Additionally, the proportion of people reporting anxiety or depression fell by 15% from 23% reporting anxiety or depression during six month period follow-up to 12% during two year period follow-up, the researchers said.

“An encouraging finding of our study was that the proportion of participants with anxiety or depression gradually decreased throughout the two years regardless of initial disease severity,” they wrote in the paper.

“The health-related quality of life continued to improve in almost all domains, especially in terms of anxiety or depression,” they further wrote in the paper.

However, the researchers noted that the people who had long Covid-19 symptoms at two years had a lower health-related quality of life, were able to exercise less, increased healthcare use and had more mental health abnormalities compared to those who did not have such symptoms.

“Covid-19 survivors still had more prevalent symptoms and more problems in pain or discomfort, as well as anxiety or depression, at two years than did controls,” they noted in the paper.

Among the people who needed ventilator support, 65% had lung diffusion impairment, while 62% had reduced residual volume compared to 36% and 20% among the control population, they further noted in the paper.

“The study findings indicate that there is an urgent need to explore the pathogenesis of long Covid and develop effective interventions to reduce the risk of long Covid,” the researchers concluded.


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