More than a million people in the UK say they are grappling with long Covid more than a year since they were infected by the coronavirus. And now scientists have pinpointed the key symptoms linked to the condition.
Dozens of symptoms have been associated with long Covid in the past. But a team of medics and data experts from the University of Missouri has now narrowed down the list to just seven, ranging from palpitations to obesity, The Sun reported
Writing in the online journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases, the researchers detailed their study of more than 17,000 patients diagnosed with Covid-19 across 112 healthcare facilities. They found that the seven most reported ongoing issues were:
- palpitations
- fatigue
- hair loss
- joint pain
- chest pain
- shortness of breath (dyspnea)
- obesity
Chi-Ren Shyu, the director of the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics, said the team's work will help medical professionals understand the condition of long Covid better.
"Despite an overwhelming number of long Covid symptoms previously reported by other studies, we only found a few symptoms specifically related to an infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19," he said.
"Before we examined the data, I thought we would find an ample amount of the symptoms to be specifically associated with long Covid. But that wasn’t the case.
"Now, researchers will be able to better understand how SARS-CoV-2 may mutate or evolve by creating new connections that we may not have known about before. Going forward, we can use electronic medical records to quickly detect subgroups of patients who may have these long-term health conditions."
A September 2022 study in the British Medical Journal reported that long Covid is more common in those who had more severe acute disease but may occur after mild or even asymptomatic disease.
Another study, published in Nature, identified key groups at increased risk of developing long Covid. It suggested that younger people, women and people of colour were at greater risk of having long Covid after contracting the virus. People from poorer backgrounds, smokers and people who were overweight were also identified as more at risk.
Meanwhile, experts have warned that some people who have long Covid are coming down with interstitial lung disease (ILD). In severe cases, the illness is fatal without a lung transplant. ILD is a group of disorders that cause inflammation and make it hard for the lungs to get enough oxygen.
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