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Young, previously healthy people with ongoing Covid-19 symptoms show signs of multiple organ damage four months after initial infection, a study suggests.
The findings are a step towards removing the physical underpinnings and developing treatments for some of the bizarre and extensive symptoms experienced by people with “prolonged Covid”, which is believed to affect more than 60,000 people in the UK. Fatigue, mental confusion, shortness of breath, and pain are among the most common effects.
On Sunday, the NHS announced that it would launch a network of more than 40 specialized Covid clinics where doctors, nurses and therapists will assess patients’ physical and psychological symptoms.
The Coverscan study aims to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on organ health in around 500 “low risk” individuals, those who are relatively young and without significant underlying health problems, with symptoms of Covid ongoing, using a combination of MRI, blood tests, physical measurements, and online questionnaires.
Preliminary data from the first 200 screened patients suggest that nearly 70% have deficiencies in one or more organs, including the heart, lungs, liver and pancreas, four months after their initial illness.
“The good news is that the deterioration is mild, but even with a conservative lens, there is some deterioration and in 25% of people it affects two or more organs,” said Amitava Banerjee, cardiologist and associate professor of clinical data science. . at University College, London.
“This is of interest because we need to know if [the impairments] continue or improve, or if there is a subset of people who could get worse. “
In some cases, but not all, there was a correlation between people’s symptoms and the site of organ damage. For example, cardiac or lung disorders were correlated with dyspnea, while liver or pancreas disorders were associated with gastrointestinal symptoms.
“It supports the idea that there is organ-level and potentially multi-organ assault that is detectable and could help explain at least some of the symptoms and trajectory of the disease,” Banerjee said.
However, the study does not prove that organ abnormalities are the cause of people’s ongoing symptoms, and the data has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Banerjee also cautioned that none of the patients were scanned prior to developing Covid-19, so some of them may have had existing impairments, although this is unlikely given their prior good health and relative youth. The average age of the participants was 44 years.
They will continue to be monitored, and researchers are also scanning people who have not had Covid-19 or have experienced other viral infections such as the flu, for comparison.
Preliminary data from a separate study of 58 patients who were hospitalized with Covid-19 found similar abnormalities in the lungs of 60%; in the kidneys 29%; in the hearts of 26%; and in the livers of 10% of patients, two to three months after the initial infection, as well as changes in tissues in parts of the brain.
“What all the people in the world with prolonged Covid are crying out for is that they be taken seriously and that they have an idea of what could be happening at the organ level, so starting to gather some kind of evidence base is absolutely the way to go, ”said Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London.
“I think this is a first step on a long journey towards providing some kind of mechanism [for their symptoms]and finally some therapies for people with prolonged Covid. “
The new findings could also have implications for the management of people with long-term Covid, suggesting the need for closer collaboration between medical specialists. “Sending the people you need to the cardiologist, and then to the gastroenterologist, and then to the neurologist would be an ineffective way to deal with things while the pandemic continues,” Banerjee said.
