Coronavirus: More Long Term Symptom News

The New York Times (Mar 23) has another article reporting the long term health issues related to COVID-19 that are coming out of the research from Northwestern Medicine. Northwestern Medicine has been doing research into the long term health impacts for awhile now. If you're interested, I've written additional posts on the research coming out of Northwestern Medicine and you can read those posts here, here and here.

What is unique about this particular study is that it studies the impact of the virus on people who were never sick enough to go to the hospital.

The study of 100 patients from 21 states, published on Tuesday in The Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, found that 85 percent of them experienced four or more neurological issues like brain fog, headaches, tingling, muscle pain and dizziness.

. . . In the Northwestern study, many experienced symptoms that fluctuated or persisted for months. Most improved over time, but there was wide variation. “Some people after two months are 95 percent recovered, while some people after nine months are only 10 percent recovered,” said Dr. Koralnik. Five months after contracting the virus, patients estimated, they felt on average only 64 percent recovered.

The average age in this study was 43. In a previous study from Northwestern Medicine that looked at long term health issues for those who required hospitalization (you can read my post on that here), the average age was 58.5. That makes sense to me that this recent study had a younger age group as COVID-19 hits the elderly harder than the young.

The abstract to the study can be found here. One interesting fact from the study is that 70% were female. I believe the fact is that men are more likely to die from COVID-19. Are women more likely to come down with long term health issues or are men just less likely to seek help? 

I think the positive takeaway from the study is that Dr. Koralnik states that most people recover from their neurological issues. A negative spin is: I'm sure they have the data in the actual study, but I do wonder what they mean by "most." Does that include people who are only 10 percent recovered after 9 months? I hope not.

What I hope to come across some day is a study on those who suffered lung damage and if those individuals saw gradual improvement over time or are their issues more permanent?