The largest study to date on what is called persistent lust (or ‘long covid’) points out that one in eight people who have contracted the coronavirus carry symptoms related to the disease three to five months later have overcome the infection. According to the analysis published this week in the scientific journal ‘The Lancet’approximately 13% of people who have had covid-19 carry at least one medium- or long-term symptom, even after overcoming the initial illness.
After interviewing nearly 75,000 patients with a mild or moderate diagnosis of covid-19, the study manages to refine which are the more recurrent and long-lasting symptoms dragged by people who have experienced covid-19. Based on the experience of the same patients, the most common symptoms of “persistent covid” include chest pain, shortness of breath, pain when breathing, muscle aches, loss of taste and smell, tingling in the extremities, lump in the throat, feeling hot and cold, heaviness in the arms and/or legs and general tiredness.
The severity of these symptoms He stabilized at three months after infection and, according to the patients, did not decrease further during the following months.
The work, carried out by researchers from the University of Groningen (Netherlands), also points to a series of symptoms which do not seem to increase in frequency or severity between three and five months after infection. This is the case, for example, of conditions such as headaches, itchy eyes, dizziness, back pain and nausea. In these cases, moreover, the experts point out that these conditions may not be directly related to the infection by covid-19. While the tingling sensation appears to be directly caused by the infection, symptoms such as headaches appear to be less directly related to the virus.
More research
“Persistent covid” has been and continues to be one of the great unknowns of the covid-19 pandemic. There are no clear figures for how many people are affected for this evil. There are also no clear protocols on how to deal with these types of persistent symptoms. According to a report by the Multidisciplinary Working Group (GTM), a group of experts that advises the government on the impact and evolution of covid-19, in Spain there could be more than a million people affected by the “long covid”.
Another of the big concerns about the “long covid” concerns reinfections. The largest study on the subject, published just days ago in the journal ‘Nature Scientific Reports’, suggests that the risk of persistent covid symptoms increases each time we are re-infected.
In this case, as the experts explain, it does not matter so much which variant of the coronavirus causes the infection as how many reinfections the patient suffers from. Especially considering the fact that after the arrival of omicron (and its subvariants), many people who were previously infected become infected again.
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