Long coronavirus – detected: most common symptoms

After a mysterious outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan just before Christmas 2019, it didn't take long before media outlets around the world began reporting on the “horror virus.”

Now, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection, which has led to widespread measures and lockdowns, is no longer, near and far, unknown to anyone.

So far, it appears that nearly 703 million cases of infection have been recorded around the world, and that the number of deaths resulting from infection with the Corona virus will soon exceed seven million. Official numbers.

The first Chinese

In the early summer of 2022, researchers were able to find out how the first seriously ill Chinese coronavirus patients were discharged from hospitals in Wuhan between January 7 and May 29, 2020.

The study, which was published in a recognized journal, showed that many of them are still suffering from their health, two full years after being infected with Corona. Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Since then, scientists around the world have paid close attention to so-called long or long Covid.

In December 2022 estimated Global Health Organization 10-20 percent of people infected with Corona will show persistent symptoms that can be diagnosed as long-term Covid.

When it comes to long-term health problems after COVID-19, many questions remain unanswered, but now researchers can engage with population-level data. It provides opportunities.

Interesting results

The most recent is a large national Scottish study published in recognized journals Nature CommunicationsWhere researchers made many interesting discoveries.

A large group of people, all of whom underwent coronavirus infection, was compared with a similarly large control group, who did not become infected at all.

This is how the researchers wanted to find the true infection rate of long Covid six, twelve and eighteen months after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The incidence of one or more symptoms attributed to coronavirus infection was 13.8 percent after six months, 12.8 percent after twelve months, and 16.3 percent after 18 months.

After the researchers adjusted for “potential confounding factors,” these numbers were 6.6 percent, 6.5 percent, and 10.4 percent, respectively.

-The greatest power

The greatest strength of this study is that it started early in the pandemic and was able to follow 198,000 people in two statistically comparable groups where people who had previously tested positive for Covid-19 were excluded, says Assistant Director Espen Rostrup Nakstad at the Health Directorate.

He points out that although the study relied on self-report forms and not clinical examinations, the size of the groups is so large that it is possible to compare the occurrence of a number of different symptoms.

The number of people whose sense of smell changed, six months after infection with Covid-19, is about seven times higher in the group with previous infection. For taste changes, the numbers are 4.5 times higher, and for palpitations, wheezing, and dry cough, the numbers are twice as high, Nakstad points out and adds:

– Therefore, the study gives a good indication of the most common symptoms six, twelve and eighteen months after Covid-19 disease, and this agrees well with other mapping studies.

According to Nakstad, the study's biggest weaknesses are that it identifies many general symptoms common to a number of conditions, and that it is difficult to assess the severity of individual patients' illnesses.