Only around one in four patients hospitalized with Covid-19 had fully recovered after a year, a British study shows on Sunday. Being a woman or being obese increases the risk of maintaining health problems.
This study, presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Lisbon and published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, used adult patient data from 39 UK National Health Service (NHS) hospitals between March 7, 2020 and April 18, 2021.
Recovery was assessed using measures of different patient test results five months and one year after discharge from hospital. In particular, the researchers took blood samples from the participants during the five-month visit to analyze the presence of various inflammatory proteins.
Some 2,320 patients were examined five months after their discharge and 33% of them were examined one year later. The study found that the proportion of adults who had fully recovered did not change significantly between five months and a year after discharge from hospital: it was 25.5% for patients examined five months after and 28.9% for those who still had it a year later.
Being female, being obese and having been on a ventilator in hospital are all associated with a lower likelihood of feeling fully recovered at one year, the study also points out.
Some of the most common symptoms of long Covid include fatigue, muscle aches, physical sluggishness, lack of sleep and shortness of breath.
/ATS