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More than three-quarters of people hospitalized with COVID-19 still suffered from at least one symptom after six months, according to a new study.
The investigation, which was published Saturday in the Lancet medical journal, involved hundreds of patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first detected.
It found that fatigue or muscle weakness were the most common symptoms, while people also reported having trouble sleeping.
The scientists said the study, one of the few that tracks long-term symptoms of COVID-19, shows the need for further research on the lingering effects of the coronavirus.
“Because COVID-19 is such a new disease, we are only beginning to understand some of its long-term effects on patient health,” said lead author Bin Cao of the National Center for Respiratory Medicine.
The professor said the research highlighted the need to continue care for patients after they have been discharged from the hospital, particularly those who have had serious infections.
The new study included 1,733 COVID-19 patients discharged from Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan between January and May last year.
The patients, who averaged 57 years old, 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 found that 76 percent of the patients who participated in the follow-up (1,265 of 1,655) said they still had symptoms.
63 percent reported fatigue or muscle weakness, while 26 percent had trouble sleeping.
The study also looked at 94 patients whose blood antibody levels were recorded at the peak of infection as part of another trial.
When these patients were retested after six months, their neutralizing antibody levels were 52.5 percent lower.
The authors said this raises concerns about the possibility of COVID-19 reinfection, although they said larger samples would be needed to clarify how immunity to the virus changes over time.
The World Health Organization has said that the virus poses a risk to some people for serious ongoing effects, even among young, otherwise healthy people who were not hospitalized. To date, there have been more than 89 million confirmed coronavirus cases, including approximately 1.9 million related deaths and 49.5 million recovered.
“Patients must be seen for a period of six months or more due to complications from contracting the virus. That means we are going to have even less capacity, less health personnel available to treat these people, ”Oksana Pyzik, a global health advisor and professor at UCL, told Al Jazeera.
“That will have consequences for the care of all kinds of chronic conditions,” such as cancer, Pyzik said.
In a commentary article, which was also published in The Lancet, Monica Cortinovis, Norberto Perico and Giuseppe Remuzzi, from Italy’s Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, said there was uncertainty about the long-term health consequences of the pandemic. .
“Unfortunately, there are few reports on the clinical picture of the aftermath of COVID-19,” they said, adding that the latest study was therefore “relevant and timely.”
They said the longer-term multidisciplinary research being carried out in the United States and the United Kingdom would help improve understanding and help develop therapies to “mitigate the long-term consequences of COVID-19 on multiple organs and tissues. “.
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