Hundreds of thousands of long-term Covid patients have received hope that their symptoms may disappear within months, thanks to a large new study involving two million people published in The New York Times magazine. british medical journal (BMJ).
Researchers have found that most people who develop illness after a mild case of Covid have symptoms that persist for several months but return to normal within a year.
They also found that the risk of “permanent” breathing problems was higher in people who did not receive the Covid-19 vaccine than in those who received it.
These results from one of the world’s largest studies on long-term Covid will be a major source of hope for many people who may have feared that without much research, their symptoms could last up to two years or much longer. how long the effect can last.
However, people who became ill with Covid long after a more severe case of the virus were not included in the study – and their symptoms tend to last longer than those who contracted after a mild infection, experts warn.
The researchers looked at information about a range of symptoms associated with long-term Covid illness, including loss of taste and smell, difficulty breathing, trouble concentrating and memory – also known as brain fog – weakness, heart palpitations and dizziness.
Most long-term cases of Covid are believed to be associated with milder cases of the virus, as they are much more common.
“While the long-standing phenomenon of Covid has been a concern and has been discussed since the start of the pandemic, we found that most of the health effects persisted for several months after a mild illness and returned to normal within the first year,” the doctor said. Maytal Bivas-Benita. at the Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Israel.
“Our study shows that mild illness does not lead to severe or chronic long-term illness and places little ongoing burden on caregivers.
“Importantly, the risk of persistent dyspnoea was reduced in vaccinated patients with breakthrough infection compared to unvaccinated subjects, while the risks of all other endpoints were similar.”
Experts not involved in the Israeli study welcomed the results.
Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick, said: “This study is very encouraging. However, long-term effects are more common in people with severe Covid, which is associated with a range of different symptoms such as difficulty breathing, fatigue and various inflammatory conditions.”
Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, said: “This is a large and interesting study.
“The general message that symptoms improve over time is reassuring, but it may take a year or so for some symptoms to disappear. The study adds to the evidence that vaccination improves outcomes, although vaccines are not very good at preventing virus transmission.
“Due to the size of the study, it was possible to look at the change in symptom prevalence over time and the influence of other factors on the persistence of symptoms.”
Dr Michael Absud of King’s College London said: “This is an encouraging study of the medical records of a large part of the Israeli population, including children of all ages, from the time when the original Sars-CoV-2 strain was alpha and then dominant delta. .”
The researchers compared data from people who were not infected with the virus with people who had mild disease, meaning they were sick but did not need hospital treatment.
They also looked at information about persisting symptoms after exposure, both in vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
The team looked at nearly two million people registered with a healthcare provider in Israel who were tested for Covid-19 between March 2020 and October 2021.
Data from almost 300,000 people with a confirmed mild case of Covid was compared with the same number of people who did not test positive for the disease.
The researchers found that long-term Covid symptoms “lasted several months” but usually disappeared within a year.
Tom Bowden analysis
While the results of the BMJ study are certainly encouraging, Covid is likely to remain a significant problem for millions of people around the world for some time to come.
First, it’s still quite difficult to have symptoms that last up to a year after a mild bout of the virus, even if they don’t last as long as many might fear.
And those who contracted Covid long after a serious infection were not included in the study — and they tend to suffer more, experts say.
In addition, data from highly reliable sources in the UK paint a rather bleak picture of prolonged Covid here, whatever the Israeli study reveals. And this is perhaps more true for people in the UK, although each new study paints a better picture.
According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, as of 4 December 2022, approximately 2.1 million people in UK homes were affected by long-term Covid.
About 57 percent of those people said they had persistent Covid symptoms for at least a year, and 30 percent said the symptoms lasted at least two years.
He is a professor at Imperial College London and Long Covid Guide Author Danny Altmann notes: “About 1 million people in the UK have been ill with Covid for at least a year, and this is a large number of people with relative disability.”
So it may be that many get it for less than a year, but many get it for much longer, so downplaying the long Covid would be completely wrong, he says.
Source: I News
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