Older patients, women and those with variety of early symptoms most at risk of "long Covid," paper suggests

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Wed, 2020-10-21 15:53 — mike kraft

Older patients, women and those with variety of early symptoms most at risk of "long Covid," paper suggests Older people, women and those with a wide range of symptoms in the first week of their illness appear to be most likely to develop “long Covid,” according to a preprint paper posted online by researchers at King’s College London on Wednesday. By <a href="/profiles/joshua-berlinger">Joshua Berlinger</a>, Adam Renton, Emma Reynolds, Ed Upright, Melissa Macaya, Mike Hayes and <a href="/profiles/meg-wagner">Meg Wagner</a>, CNN CNN

Older people, women and those with a wide range of symptoms in the first week of their illness appear to be most likely to develop “long Covid,” according to a preprint paper posted online by researchers at King’s College London on Wednesday.

The paper defines "long Covid" as having symptoms persist for more than four weeks, while a short duration of Covid was defined as less than 10 days, without a subsequent relapse.

About 1 in 20 people with Covid-19, or 4.5%, are likely to experience symptoms for eight weeks or more, the preprint analysis of data from the Covid Symptom Study app showed. The analysis has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The data was collected from 4,182 users of the app in the UK who reported testing positive for coronavirus and regularly logged their health information in the app.

When it came to the sets of symptoms reported, the research identified two main groups of long Covid sufferers.

Group 1 experienced mainly respiratory symptoms, such as a cough and shortness of breath, plus fatigue and headaches.
Group 2 experienced “multi-system” symptoms in many parts of the body, such as heart palpitations, gut issues, pins and needles or numbness, and “brain fog.”

“It’s important we use the knowledge we have gained from the first wave in the pandemic to reduce the long-term impact of the second. This should pave the way for trials of early interventions to reduce the long term effects,” said Dr. Claire Steves, clinical academic and senior author from King’s College London, in a news release. ...