According to a recent study, there are only seven symptoms specific to long Covid that some patients develop after Covid-19.
- It is possible that the symptoms of Covid-19 persist in the weeks or even months following the onset of the disease: beyond four weeks, we speak of long Covid.
- In France, 30% of people who had an infection with SARS-CoV-2 more than three months previously (2 million patients) still suffer from one or more symptoms of long Covid, according to a study by Public Health France in July.
- Symptoms of long Covid can persist from the onset of the disease, but they can also appear later.
In a new study, published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, a team of researchers from the University of Missouri was able to identify the long-term sequelae specific to Covid-19 and separate them from the symptoms of other common respiratory infections. They thus made an unexpected discovery: people suffering from long-lasting symptoms of Covid-19, which is called “Covid long”, are likely to develop seven symptoms only. These last for up to a year after infection, according to another recent Israeli study.
Fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath… here are the symptoms of long Covid
These symptoms are:
- rapid heartbeat
- hair loss
- tiredness
- chest pain
- shortness of breath
- joint pain
- obesity.
To reach this conclusion, the research team analyzed Oracle Cerner data that comes from electronic medical records containing anonymized information for medical research purposes. After reviewing the records of 52,461 patients at 122 healthcare facilities across the United States, researchers selected the 47 most commonly reported core symptoms of Long Covid for review. Then the scientists compared them with the symptoms of other viral respiratory infections, establishing three categories: a group of Covid-19 patients who do not have other common viral respiratory infections such as influenza or pneumonia, a group of people who are sick with these common viral respiratory infections but who do not have Covid-19 and finally, a group of people who have neither Covid-19 nor a respiratory infection.
Essential information for healthcare providers
“Despite the impressive number of long Covid symptoms previously reported by other studies, we found only a few symptoms specifically linked to infection with Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19”said Chi-Ren Shyu, director of the MU Institute for Data Science and Computing and co-author of the study, in a communicated. “Before looking at the data, I thought we would find a large amount of symptoms specifically associated with long Covid, but that was not the case”he added.
These results could benefit medical research efforts in studying the various impacts of Covid-19, according to the scientist: “Now researchers will be able to better understand how Sars-CoV-2 can mutate or evolve by creating new connections that we may not have known about before”. They will also provide health care providers with much-needed information on what to ask for and look for when a patient comes in for long Covid symptoms.