Everything we know about possible long-term effects of COVID-19 – Statesville Record & Landmark

Stacker compiled 36 facts about long haul COVID-19 patients, from symptoms to demographics, using data from Mayo Clinic, The Atlantic, and news sources.

Mayo Clinic reports that people with long haul COVID-19 are likely to experience fatigue. This can range from low level, episodic fatigue to full-on chronic fatigue syndrome, doctors believe.

People who have contracted COVID-19 are more likely to get brain conditions like seizures, strokes, and Guillain-Barre syndrome. They may also be more likely to have cognitive illnesses like Alzheimers disease or Parkinsons disease in the long term.

In a study of 143 released patients in Rome, 53% had fatigue and 43% had shortness of breath even after two months. Researchers believe this could be related to the lung damage and scarring that COVID-19 causes. The expected duration of a COVID-19 case thats not long haul is about two weeks.

Patients with long haul COVID-19 infections report chest pain as one of their major lingering symptoms. Long haul cases tend to have been mild at first, so this pain is probably from lung damage and scarring rather than ventilator complications.

Emerging data on long haul COVID-19 patients suggests they may be mostly women. Researchers will have to do more work to understand why this is, but it has implications for how long haulers will be treated.

Based on numbers of documented long haul COVID-19 cases today, there are probably hundreds of thousands of these cases just in the United States. As these patients pour into doctors offices for longer term medical care, they could create a secondary hospital crunch.

Patients with long haul COVID-19 cases can have health problems caused by weakening of their blood vessels. This can cause long-term organ damage and should be taken very seriously.

Patients who are hospitalized and end up intubated for ventilation can end up with long haul type symptoms just from the consequences of ventilation. This can include loss of muscle or nerve function that must be rebuilt over many months.

People who have caught and survived COVID-19 by treatments like ventilation can develop post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional consequences because of the nature of the illness and treatment. They may also be more likely to have depression or anxiety afterward.

People with long haul COVID-19 symptoms are likely to have symptoms collectively called dysautonomia. These include ripples through the digestive or circulatory systems that, in healthy people, operate almost totally unnoticed.

In images from months after their initial infections, many patients have damaged muscles of the heart that researchers believe could increase the long-term risk of heart failure. They found this result even among patients with mild cases.

Due to fine differences in testing or even what markers are being used to test, people with long haul COVID-19 symptoms have often tested negative for the virus. This also varies depending on when they were tested, with as little as a few days difference changing testing outcomes.

The COVID-19 virus targets a receptor called ACE2 that many body cells have. Researchers believe the targeted damage to this receptor is responsible for some of the body system damage that patients can experience.

Patients who end up with pneumonia, which is a common side infection with COVID-19, are likely to have lasting damage to the alveoli of their lungs. These tiny air sacs can become blocked or damaged, leading to reduced lung capacity and function.

One researcher studied 1,400 patients with long haul COVID-19 symptoms and found that two thirds got a negative result from an antibody test. Researchers believe this lack of antibodies could relate to the longer-term symptoms.

In a study of patients in China, 25% of patients still had lung symptoms after four months. Another 16% reported troubling fatigue.

People with long haul COVID-19 symptoms are likely to experience joint pain. This fits into a working theory of some researchers that the longer lasting symptoms are caused by inflammation.

Researchers who study SARS and patient outcomes following that pandemic say that long haul COVID-19 patients could take lessons from SARS outcomes. This includes the same troubling amount of chronic fatigue symptoms.

People with long haul COVID-19 symptoms are likely to experience post-exertional malaise, which is a physical fallout from even minor activities or efforts. Scientists dont understand this mechanism well in patients with or without COVID-19.

Long haul COVID-19 patients reported that they received conflicting advice, diagnoses, and other medical attention. They also said this confused or disbelieving messaging caused them to feel unsupported by their medical teams.

Loss of sense of taste is one of the most widely reported long-term symptoms of COVID-19. Patients can also lose their sense of smell.

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has compiled 36 facts about long haul COVID-19 patients, from symptoms to demographics, using data from the Mayo Clinic, The Atlantics COVID Tracking Project, and new sources.

Many long haul COVID-19 patients have symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). They may have debilitating fatigue, brain fog, and even the same challenges that existing CFS patients face when trying to communicate their needs to doctors. Researchers believe many CFS cases come from a viral infection of some kind, and theyve pointed out that diagnoses of CFS rise after almost all pandemic events.

SARS in particular has offered todays researchers a way to begin understanding long haul COVID-19 patients. Do symptoms that last for months after initial COVID-19 infection necessarily last forever, or will they improve with time or treatment? Doctors must be ready to really listen to patients with these symptoms, but instead, patients have reported having difficulty being taken seriously. This is already a problem people who suffer CFS are familiar with. And research shows that women and minorities already face inferior medical care compared to white men, an issue that predates COVID-19 but has been highlighted during the pandemic and will continue to be a problem in its aftermath.

There are also overlapping effects from long haul COVID-19 in different body systems. The heart, for example, may be damaged by the way the virus works and then further weakened by autonomic changes to the hearts rhythms and damage to the blood vessels. For patients who fear theyre experiencing long haul or resurging COVID-19 symptoms, the best idea is to talk to a trusted doctor as soon as possible in order to understand and mitigate harm. This could involve physical therapy, medical treatment, and more.

Read on to learn what we know about CFS and other potential long-term effects of COVID-19.

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The CDC finds that 1 in 5 young and healthy adults who caught COVID-19 ended up with prolonged problems afterward. The average age of those with long haul COVID-19 infections is just 44. Thats well below the age range considered highest risk for severe cases of COVID-19, and the set of symptoms is very different. The overall group is also healthier than average, with far fewer hospitalizations for their main symptoms.

People with long haul COVID-19 cases report much higher levels of memory problems, concentration problems, and sleep problems. Symptoms like brain fog and fatigue compound and leave many of these long haulers less able to work, for example.

The PHOSP-COVID study in the United Kingdom will follow the outcomes of 10,000 COVID-19 patients for a year. Researchers will take measurements and conduct tests to monitor how patients recover and bounce back during the year.

Patients with long haul COVID-19 symptoms report high rates of muscle pain as well as headaches. Researchers tentatively believe this could be related to inflammation both during the initial COVID-19 symptoms and in the long tail of lingering symptoms.

People with long haul COVID-19 cases are presenting a huge variety of serious symptoms that fit with chronic fatigue syndrome, also called myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). Researchers believe ME/CFS is often caused by viruses, and say there are typically increases in cases following pandemic events around the world. Symptoms can also mirror those of fibromyalgia, mast cell activation syndrome, and other chronic illnesses.

A study of patients in Austria reported that lung damage dropped from 88% of patients after six weeks to just 56% after 12 weeks. That means more than half of the patients still had visible lung damage after three or more months.

Patients with long haul COVID-19 symptoms report having persistent coughs for months after their initial infection. This is likely related to scarring of the lung tissue.

In a patient-run survey of a major group of long haul symptom sufferers, almost 91% reported that they werent recovered 40 days or more after COVID-19 infection. The duration of average milder cases has hovered around twoweeks.

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People with long haul COVID-19 symptoms are more likely to have a rapid or pounding heartbeat. This could be because of the way COVID-19 harms blood vessels or autonomic responses in the body.

A small study found that more than a third of its 33 subjects had visible scarring on their lungs. This research is likely to be followed by larger, more comprehensive studies of the prevalence of scarred lung tissue.

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Everything we know about possible long-term effects of COVID-19 - Statesville Record & Landmark