Long-Covid can manifest itself with a variety of symptoms. But now researchers in Great Britain have found new symptoms in a large study with almost half a million people affected, which often occurred up to twelve weeks after the initial infection – including hair loss and loss of libido.
Over 1.8 million people are currently infected with Corona in Germany. Even if most infections are mild, doctors fear a flood of long-Covid patients. Because even people who develop hardly any or no Covid-19 symptoms at all can suffer from long-term consequences of a Sars-CoV-2 infection that last for weeks or even months.
Among the most frequently documented complaints in connection with Long-Covid are
But heart problems, kidney and metabolic disorders can also occur as a result of an infection – the list of possible symptoms is long: In various studies, those affected have given up to 200 different symptoms for Long-Covid.
In Germany, doctors refer to complaints that persist for more than four weeks after the acute corona infection as “long Covid”. Complaints that last longer than twelve weeks are referred to as “post-Covid”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines post-Covid as a condition characterized by symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive dysfunction that affect daily life after undergoing Sars-CoV-2 infection. They usually appear three months after the onset of acute Covid-19 symptoms, last at least two months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.
A new large-scale study by the University of Birmingham has now found 62 symptoms in non-hospitalized corona sufferers that persisted for more than twelve weeks after the initial infection. The data for this came from the electronic medical records of 486,149 people affected by corona in the UK who were infected between January 2020 and April 2021.
To see which symptoms were associated with Long-Covid, the researchers compared the health data with that of over 1.94 million non-infected people. They divided the symptoms they found into 14 different categories, including breathing, pain, fatigue and cognitive and mental health.
They were able to see that the following symptoms, some of which were previously less known in connection with Long-Covid, occurred most frequently in Long-Covid patients:
When it comes to who is most affected by Long-Covid, the researchers were able to identify the following risk factors:
However, the risk factors are only one facet and do not fully explain why someone falls ill. “This research confirms what patients have been telling clinicians and policymakers during the pandemic, that the symptoms of Long-Covid are extremely broad and cannot be fully explained by other factors such as lifestyle risk factors or chronic health conditions,” said study leader Shamil Haroon the science magazine Science Daily. With their study, the researchers want to help clinics better assess patients and then consider how best to manage the symptom burden, Haroon said.
The fact that previous illnesses play a role in whether someone falls ill with Long-Covid was recently shown by an evaluation of billing data from statutory health insurance physicians from 2021 by the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Physician Care (ZI) in Berlin. According to this, almost 96 percent of around 170,000 long-Covid patients were already treated by a panel doctor in the previous year.
According to the report, conspicuously frequent treatment occasions in the run-up to Corona were, for example
According to ZI boss Dominik Stillfried, the study indicates that people with previous illnesses have a higher risk of long-Covid. “The billing data from the health insurance companies show that people with long-Covid were usually not completely healthy before,” Stillfried told FOCUS Online.
“It does happen that someone was perfectly healthy beforehand and is severely affected by long-Covid after their corona infection, but it is not the rule,” says Stillfried. At least that was reflected in the data from the health insurance companies. Because four percent of long-Covid patients had not previously seen a doctor. The data showed that younger and healthier people were less likely to be affected by post-Covid than people with pre-existing conditions.
The long-Covid specialist Jördis Frommhold, who has already treated over 5000 patients at the Median Klinik in Heiligendamm, was rather critical of the results. “Long-Covid is very difficult to diagnose and many doctors have little experience with it.” To say that most long-Covid patients therefore have a previous illness is too one-sided. It could just as easily affect young and healthy people.
According to estimates by the World Health Organization, between ten and 20 percent suffer from the long-term effects of a corona infection for weeks and months.
