A corona infection no longer seems a big deal to many. But Covid-19 follows Long Covid in about ten percent of all cases. A new study summarizes the current state of research – and comes to worrying conclusions.
Approximately 65 million people worldwide suffer from the long-term effects of corona disease. This is the result of an overview study that was published a few days ago in the journal “Nature Reviews Microbiology”. Scientists from the Patient-Led Research Collaborative and the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, assume that about ten percent of the approximately 651 million people infected worldwide are affected. Presumably, however, the number is even higher due to many undocumented cases.
This would make Long Covid or Post Covid much more serious than previously thought. In Germany alone, it is now assumed that at least one million people are suffering from the long-term consequences of the infection. For their study, the researchers evaluated the current study situation on the subject. They also included results from decades of research on diseases such as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
Long Covid was a more colloquial term for complaints that persist or reappear beyond the acute phase of a Sars-CoV-2 infection of four weeks. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines post-Covid as the persistence or development of symptoms three months after a corona infection. The symptoms must last for at least two months and cannot be explained by any other diagnosis. The two terms are often used equally for the long-term consequences of a corona infection and Covid-19 disease. In the meantime, more than 200 symptoms, often of varying severity, have been identified, according to the “Nature” study. Many sufferers report tiredness and exhaustion, shortness of breath, concentration and memory problems or muscle weakness.
In the meantime, hundreds of biomedical findings have been documented. This shows that many patients experience dozens of symptoms in multiple organ systems. In addition, the symptoms are constantly changing, temporarily disappearing and then returning. “Symptoms can persist for years and, particularly in cases of new-onset ME/CFS and dysautonomia, can be expected to last for life,” it says. The researchers consider it particularly worrying that there are currently no treatments whose effectiveness has been proven.
According to this evaluation, the secondary diseases affect 10 to 30 percent of the non-hospitalized cases, 50 to 70 percent of the people who were treated in the hospital and also 10 to 12 percent of the vaccinated patients. However, the research situation is not yet clear on the last point in particular. An investigation sees no significant difference between long-Covid symptoms in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Other studies assume that vaccination reduces the risk of Long Covid to 15 to 41 percent.
All age groups can be affected and any degree of severity of the Covid 19 disease can later lead to the secondary disease, according to the US research team. The highest percentage of diagnoses is between the ages of 36 and 50 years, most cases are documented in non-hospitalized patients with a mild course of the disease. The scientists attribute this to the fact that this population represents the majority of all Covid-19 cases.
Potential risk factors include female gender, type 2 diabetes, reactivation of a previous Epstein-Barr infection, and the presence of specific autoantibodies. However, no pre-existing conditions could be identified in a third of people with Long Covid. The team identified lower income and the “inability to adequately rest in the first few weeks after the development of Covid-19” as socioeconomic risk factors.
In the end, several overlapping causes are probably responsible for the complex symptoms and the often significant limitations. Long Covid is a multisystemic disease affecting multiple organ systems, as well as vascular and coagulation abnormalities. The disease already affects millions of people and the number is growing.
In particular, decades of research on chronic fatigue syndrome suggest that a significant proportion of people with long-term covid are at risk of lifelong disability if no action is taken. The authors of the study call the current “diagnosis and treatment options” “insufficient”. Numerous clinical trials are urgently needed to test treatments that address possible biological mechanisms underlying the disease. The team of experts also includes excessive blood clotting and autoimmunity.
