More than three-quarters of people hospitalized with COVID-19 still had at least one symptom after six months, according to a new study.
The research, which was published in the Lancet Medical Journal on Saturday, involved hundreds of patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first detected.
It has been found that fatigue or muscle weakness are the most common symptoms, while people have also reported difficulty sleeping.
The scientists said the study – among the few that tracked the long-term symptoms of COVID-19 – shows the need for further investigation into the persistent effects of coronavirus.
Because COVID-19 is such a new disease, we are only beginning to understand some of its long-term effects on patients’ health, said lead author Bin Cao of the National Center for Respiratory Medicine.
The professor said that the research highlighted the need for continuous care of patients after they were discharged from the hospital, especially those who had severe infections.
The new study included 1,733 COVID-19 patients discharged from Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan between January and May last year.
The patients, who had a mean age of 57 years, were visited between June and September and answered questions about their symptoms and health-related quality of life.
The researchers also performed physical examinations and laboratory tests.
The study found that 76 percent of patients who participated in the follow-up (1,265 of 1,655) said they still had symptoms.
Muscle fatigue or weakness were reported by 63%, while 26% had trouble sleeping.
The study also looked at 94 patients whose blood antibody levels were recorded at the height of the infection as part of another study.
When these patients were retested after six months, their neutralizing antibody levels were 52.5% lower.
The authors said this raises concerns about the possibility of COVID-19 reinfection, although they said larger samples will be needed to clarify how immunity to the virus changes over time.
The World Health Organization says the virus poses a risk to some people with ongoing serious side effects – even among otherwise healthy young people who have not been hospitalized. To date, there have been over 89 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, including approximately 1.9 million deaths and 49.5 million recovered.
Patients should be seen for a period of six months or more due to complications from contracting the virus. That means we will have even less capacity, less health care available to treat these people, ”Oksana Pyzik, a global health adviser and lecturer at UCL, told Al Jazeera.
“This will have direct consequences for the care of all types of chronic conditions,” such as cancer, Pyzik said.
In a commentary, which was also published in the Lancet, Monica Cortinovis, Norberto Perico and Giuseppe Remuzzi of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS in Italy said there was uncertainty about the long-term consequences of the pandemic. on health.
“Unfortunately, there are few reports on the clinical picture of the consequences of COVID-19,” they said, adding that the latest study was therefore “relevant and timely.”
They said long-term multidisciplinary research in the United States and the United Kingdom would help improve understanding and develop therapies to mitigate the long-term consequences of COVID-19 on multiple organs and tissues.