A new study has highlighted two new symptoms of Long Covid being experienced by patients more than two years after the pandemic began.
Hair loss and a low sex drive have been added to fatigue and brain fog according to a major British study involving more than two million people.
Researchers found that Long Covid sufferers have experienced a huge set of more than 60 symptoms than what was previously known, which include sexual dysfunction and alopecia.
READ MORE: Irish granny tells of nightmare long Covid symptoms that's left her in 'dark place'
The findings were recently published in the journal Nature Medicine, and showed that patients with a legitimate record of infection with Covid-19 reported 62 symptoms much more frequently 12 weeks after testing positive than those who hadn’t contracted the virus.
Anonymised electronic health records of 2.4 million people in the UK were analysed by researchers from the University of Birmingham alongside a team of doctors and researchers in England.
The team involved epidemiologists, clinicians, data scientists, statisticians, and patients to decode electronic health records to accurately capture persistent symptoms experienced after infection.
The data was taken between January 2020 and April 2021 and involved more than 480,000 people with prior infection, and 1.9 million people with no record of ever having coronavirus after matching for other clinical diagnoses.
The team of researchers were able to identify three categories of distinct symptoms - among patients that were non-hospitalised - reported by people with persistent health problems after infection.
While the most common symptoms include anosmia - loss of sense of smell, shortness of breath, chest pain and fever, others detailed amnesia, bowel incontinence, erectile dysfunction, hallucinations, limb swelling and apraxia - the inability to perform familiar movements or commands.
The study’s senior author, Dr Shamil Haroon, Associate Clinical Professor in Public Health at the University of Birmingham, said: “This research validates what patients have been telling clinicians and policy makers throughout the pandemic, that the symptoms of Long Covid are extremely broad and cannot be fully accounted for by other factors such as lifestyle risk factors or chronic health conditions.”
“The symptoms we identified should help clinicians and clinical guideline developers to improve the assessment of patients with long-term effects from Covid-19, and to subsequently consider how this symptom burden can be best managed.”
Patient partner and study co-author Jennifer Camaradou added: “This study is instrumental in creating and adding further value to understanding the complexity and pathology of long Covid. It highlights the degree and diversity of expression of symptoms between different clusters.
"Patients with pre-existing health conditions will also welcome the additional analysis on risk factors.”
Aside from identifying a much wider set of symptoms, the research team also found key demographic groups and behaviours that put people at increased risk of developing Long Covid.
It suggested that women, younger people, and anyone belonging to a black, mixed or other ethnic group are at greater risk of developing Long Covid.
People from less aflluent socio-economic backgrounds, smokers, people who are overweight or obese, are also at a higher risk.
Study lead author Anuradhaa Subramanian, a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, said: “Our data analyses of risk factors are of particular interest because it helps us to consider what could potentially be causing or contributing to Long Covid.
"We already know that certain modifiable traits - such as smoking and obesity - put people at increased risk of various diseases and conditions, including Long Covid. However, others such as biological sex and ethnicity also appear to be important.
“Women are for example more likely to experience autoimmune diseases. Seeing the increased likelihood of women having Long Covid in our study increases our interest in investigating whether autoimmunity or other causes may explain the increased risk in women.
"These observations will help to further narrow the focus on factors to investigate that may be causing these persistent symptoms after an infection, and how we can help patients who are experiencing them.”
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