2023-12-15 10:49:10
Long Covid is now on everyone’s lips. However, there is less talk about the long-term consequences of the flu. Now researchers have compared the two phenomena.
Similar to Corona, a flu infection in hospital patients can also have serious long-term consequences. US researchers point this out in the journal “The Lancet Infectious Diseases”. They observed and compared the health development of patients who were admitted to hospital because of corona or flu over a period of 18 months.
The group led by Ziyad Al-Aly from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (Missouri, USA) found, among other things, that with both Corona and the flu in the acute phase (up to 30 days after the start of infection). The risk of certain serious health problems was lower than in the period afterwards. On average, the risk of serious long-term consequences after a corona infection was higher than after the flu.
Al-Aly and colleagues call the long-lasting effects of the flu “Long Flu,” where “flu” is short for the English term for flu. The term “Long Covid” has also become common in Germany for the long-term consequences of Covid-19.
The study did not focus on the question of how often Long Covid or Long Flu occurs in hospital patients.
“An important lesson we have learned from Sars-CoV-2 is that an infection originally thought to cause only a short illness can also lead to a chronic illness,” Al-Aly said in quoted in a university announcement.
The researchers wanted to know whether and to what extent people with flu also have long-term health problems. They examined the cases of 81,280 patients who were hospitalized for Covid-19 between March 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022. They compared their health development with the cases of 10,985 patients who were treated in hospital for flu between October 1, 2015 and February 28, 2019.
In the 18 months examined, Covid-19 patients had a 51 percent increased risk of dying compared to flu patients (28.46 cases versus 19.84 cases per 100 people).
The health risk for corona patients was higher than for flu patients in nine out of ten organ systems examined. Only with regard to the lungs did flu patients have a higher risk of negative health consequences. The number of years of healthy life lost (DALY – disability-adjusted life years) was 242.66 years per 100 people in the flu group and 287.43 years in the Covid-19 group.
“The idea that Covid-19 or influenza are only acute illnesses overlooks their larger long-term impacts on human health,” Al-Aly stressed. Doctors need to be more aware that viral infections are a significant cause of chronic diseases.
For both Covid-19 and seasonal flu, vaccinations could help prevent severe disease and reduce the risk of hospitalizations and deaths, Al-Aly said. “Optimizing vaccination rates must remain a priority for governments and health systems around the world.” This is particularly true for vulnerable population groups, such as older people and people with weakened immune systems.
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