According to a study from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans, new findings on the long COVIDthe long-term health effects experienced by many who have had the infection – present a good news and bad news situation.
The research was published on Nature Medicine.
Risk of death from Covid decreased
The bad news: COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital within the first 30 days of infection are at a 29% greater risk of death in the third year than people who have not contracted the virus. However, the three-year risk of death still marks a significant decline compared to that risk one and two years after infection. The findings also show that even people with mild SARS-CoV-2 were still experiencing new health problems related to the infection three years later.
The good news: The increased risk of death declines significantly one year after SARS-CoV-2 infection among people who were not hospitalized with the virus. This demographic represents the majority of people who have had COVID
The research tracked the health effects of the virus in people three years after they were infected with the original strain of COVID-19 in 2020. That year, about 20 million people tested positive for the virus in the United States. The study assessed the risk of death and 80 adverse health conditions in people three years after being diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2.
“We are not sure why the effects of the virus persist so long,” said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University and a global leader in long-running SARS-CoV-2 research.
“Maybe it has to do with viral persistence, chronic inflammation, immune dysfunction, or all of the above. We tend to think of infections as mostly short-term illnesses with health effects that appear around the time of infection. Our data challenges this notion. I feel that SARS-CoV-2 continues to teach us – and this is an important new lesson – that a brief, seemingly harmless or benign encounter with the virus can still lead to health problems years later.”
According to federal data, up to 10% of people infected with the virus experience long-term COVID.
Al-Aly’s previous research has documented SARS-CoV-2 damage to nearly all human organs, contributing to diseases and conditions affecting the lungs, heart, brain, and blood, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal (GI) systems. ).
Such studies with longer follow-up are limited, said Al-Aly, a nephrologist who treats patients at the Washington University-affiliated John J. Cochran Veterans Hospital in downtown St. Louis. “Addressing this knowledge gap is critical to improving our understanding of C. longus and will help inform the care of people suffering from C. longus.”
Al-Aly and his team analyzed millions of anonymized medical records in a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the nation’s largest integrated health system. The study included more than 114,000 veterans with mild COVID-19 who did not require hospitalization; more than 20,000 SARS-CoV-2 patients hospitalized; and 5.2 million veterans undiagnosed with SARS-CoV-2.
Patients were enrolled in the study from March 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, and followed for at least three years, until December 31, 2023. Patients included people of different ages, races, and genders; statistical modeling ensured parity in representation.
In the third year after infection, SARS-CoV-2 patients who were hospitalized experienced a 34% elevated health risk across all organ systems compared to people who did not have COVID. That number is down from a 182% increased risk one year after a SARS-CoV-2 infection and a 57% risk two years later.
Among non-hospitalized patients, researchers found a 5% increased risk of suffering from C. longus in the third year after infection. This translates into 41 additional health problems per 1,000 people: a small but not trivial burden.
Long-term health effects in the third year mainly affected the gastrointestinal, pulmonary and neurological systems. By comparison, the risk was increased by 23% one year after infection and 16% two years later.
In the analysis, the researchers also measured and compared the number of years of healthy life lost due to SARS-CoV-2. They found that among non-hospitalized people, three years after infection, SARS-CoV-2 had contributed to the loss of 10 years of healthy life per 1,000 people. By comparison, three years after infection, people hospitalized with COVID had experienced 90 lost years of healthy life per 1,000 people.
As an example, in the United States, heart disease and cancer each cause approximately 50 lost years of healthy life per 1,000 people, while stroke contributes to 10 lost years of healthy life per 1,000 people.
“The problem is even worse for people with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. It is very concerning that the disease burden among hospitalized individuals is astronomically higher.”
“COVID poses a serious threat to people’s long-term health and well-being and should not be trivialized,” he said.
The extended trajectory for SARS-CoV-2 over the long term may change as researchers incorporate data from years after 2020. At that time, vaccines and antivirals had not been developed. Likewise, Al-Aly’s analysis does not consider later variants such as omicron or delta.
“Even three years later, you may have forgotten about COVID, but SARS-CoV-2 has not forgotten about you,” Al-Aly said. “People may think they are out of danger, because they have had the virus and have had no health problems. But three years after infection, the virus could still wreak havoc and cause disease in the gut, lungs or brain. “
#risk #death #COVID #decreases #problems #years
