One in eight adults who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, develops long term Covid-19 symptoms like chest pain, back pain, nausea, painful muscles, difficulties with breathing, lump in the throat, general tiredness, heavy arms or legs, etc, according to a new study published in The Lancet journal. Notably, this is the first study which is able to identify which persistent symptoms are particularly related to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
The research draws comparison between long-term symptoms after long Covid-19 infection with symptoms in an uninfected person as well as measuring symptoms in individuals both pre- and post-Covid-19 virus. It laid emphasis on the symptoms most often associated with long Covid-19 and gives an estimate at how likely it occurs in the general population.
A total of 76,400 adults in the Netherlands were asked to fill out an online questionnaire on 23 common long Covid-19 symptoms. Each participant filled out the questionnaire 24 times between March 2020-August 2021. During this, more than 4,200 people reported catching Covid-19.
Here are 10 points you need to know about long Covid-19 symptoms based on the study published by The Lancet,
1) During the study, the researchers analyzed as many as 23 symptoms which includes headache, dizziness, chest pain, back pain, nausea, painful muscles, difficulties with breathing, feeling hot and cold alternately, tingling extremities, lump in the throat, general tiredness, heavy arms or legs, pain when breathing, runny nose, sore throat, dry cough, wet cough, fever, diarrhoea, stomach pain, ageusia or anosmia, sneezing, and itchy eyes.
2) Those infected with Covid-19, over 21% patients had at least new or severely increased symptoms three to five months after getting infected. However, only 9% of a control group which did not have Covid reported a similar increase.
3) The study says that Covid-19 cases can be asymptomatic and remain undetected. Therefore, the prevalence of the coronavirus infection in this study might have been underestimated.
4) Multiple studies have assessed the persistence of somatic symptoms after getting infected with Covid-19, with timeframes of follow-up varying from 21 days to six months, while some studies included participants from post-Covid-19 support groups or predominantly patients who were hospitalized, leading to biased results.
5) The researchers found that several symptoms were new or more severe, three to five months after getting infected with Covid-19, as compared to the symptoms before its diagnosis.
6) After the survey, the researched found that the prevalent symptom was fatigue (11–42% of patients), followed by dyspnoea (8–37%), painful muscles (7–24%), and ageusia or anosmia (3–24%). Thoracic pain was reported in 3–14% of patients at 90–180 days after coronavirus infection.
7) Although they found similar prevalence rates for some of these symptoms and showed that these rates were lower when patients’ symptom severity before Covid-19 was taken into account, read the study, adding that the most prevalent symptoms are not the most distinctive symptoms for post-Covid condition.
8) A large study that included 1,06,578 patients with Covid and matched controls with influenza, which assessed the persistence of seven somatic symptoms at 90–180 days after diagnosis, found that somatic symptoms, such as headache, chest pain, and fatigue, were more frequently present in patients with Covid-19 than in the controls.
9) In this study, the researches analyzed that fatigue and dyspnoea are among the the core symptoms, but the most distinctive symptoms also included chest pain and ageusia or anosmia (considered important for the case definition by 55% and 57% of the Delphi panel, respectively).
10) This study overcame various limitations of other researches on SARS-CoV-2 by performing sensitivity analyses restricted to participants with a Covid-19 diagnosis based on a positive SARS-CoV-2 test and by the study’s prospective design.
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