According to a new study published in Lancet and which has involved hundreds of patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan, more than three quarters of people hospitalized with COVID-19 still had at least one symptom after six months.
This highlights the need for more research into the lingering effects of the coronavirus.
At least one symptom
The World Health Organization has said the virus poses a risk to some people of ongoing serious effects, even among young, otherwise healthy people who were not hospitalized.
The new study included 1,733 patients with COVID-19 discharged from Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan between January and May last year.
The patients, who had an average 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 thus found that fatigue or muscle weakness were the most common symptoms, while people also reported having difficulty sleeping. As explained by the main author Bin Cao, from the National Center for Respiratory Medicine:
Because COVID-19 is such a new disease, we are just beginning to understand some of its long-term effects on patients' health. Our work also underscores the importance of conducting longer follow-up studies in larger populations to understand the full spectrum of effects COVID-19 can have on people.
The study also examined 94 patients whose blood antibody levels were recorded at the height of infection as part of another trial. When these patients were reexamined after six months, their neutralizing antibody levels were 52.5 percent lower. This raises concerns about the possibility of reinfection with COVID-19.
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The news
The 76% of patients with COVID-19 still present symptoms six months after infection
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.