Posted by Elle on
URL: https://www.es-forum.com/Covid-Aftereffects-tp4035552p4035554.html

It is very interesting... from Forbes:

"However, the rapid recovery has not been the experience of thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of patients worldwide who’ve been classified as mild cases. Many struggle for months with lingering Covid-19 symptoms that can be debilitating. They exhibit shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, intermittent fevers, cough, concentration issues, chest pressure, headaches, and heart palpitations, among other symptoms. The literature has a name for them: “long-haulers.”

In the Netherlands, the Lung Foundation, together with the University of Maastricht and the CIRO group,* surveyed 1,622 Covid-19 patients who had reported a number of long-term effects from their illness. Ninety-one percent of the patients were not hospitalized, which indicates that the vast majority of the surveyed patients would fall under the category “mildly symptomatic.” The average age of the patients surveyed was 53.

Nearly 88% of patients reported persistent intense fatigue, while almost three out of four had continued shortness of breath. Other enduring symptoms included, among other things, chest pressure (45% of patients), headache and muscle ache (40% and 36%, respectively), elevated pulse (30%), and dizziness (29%). Perhaps the most startling finding was that 85% of the surveyed patients considered themselves healthy prior to getting Covid-19. One or more months after getting the disease, only 6% consider themselves healthy.

Just as the exact biological mechanism(s) that leads to the manifestation of Covid-19 disease symptoms is unknown, it’s uncertain why some patients exhibit very long-term effects. A number of clinicians posit that a reactivation may occur in a number of patients in which the coronavirus, which could lie dormant or latent in a patient’s body for a period of time, “awakens” to an active phase and causes recurring symptoms. Essentially, this hypothesis suggests that some patients harbor the virus somewhere in their body, and they either still test positive for the virus or it is missed by conventional coronavirus tests that use nasal swabs. What is perhaps a more likely scenario, according to immunologists, is that the virus no longer resides in the body but the immune system continues to be in perpetual overdrive.

Regardless of the possible reasons for some “mildly” ill patients being symptomatic long-term, the Dutch study confirms what has been known anecdotally about long-haulers. For this group, recovery is a grueling process. Globally, as the the numbers of people infected with the novel coronavirus increases, so will the number of people with (temporary) disabilities, in spite of their “mildly symptomatic” status."


Link https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2020/06/13/report-suggests-some-mildly-symptomatic-covid-19-patients-endure-serious-long-term-effects/#1c503c665979