Certain Symptoms Associated with Long COVID-19 Risk

Headache, sore throats, caught, fever, and malaise are the most common symptoms associated with COVID-19, but its also more symptoms like hair loss, anosmia, diarrhea, abdominal pain and loss of the taste.

Which symptoms are associated with Long-Term COVID-19?

The people who had sore throats, headaches, and hair loss soon after testing positive for COVID-19 may be more likely to have prolonged symptoms weeks and months later, according to a recent study. 

Eileen Crimmins , PhD and a demographer at the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology ,and colleagues analyzed data from the Understanding Coronavirus in America survey, which followed nearly 8000 people bi-weekly from March 2020 to March 2021. They focused on 308 nonhospitalized COVID-19 patients who were interviewed 1 month before their infection, around the time of infection, and 12 weeks after infection.

About 23% of the survey participants were still experiencing symptoms that lasted for more than 12 weeks, which the researchers considered as having long COVID. The most common persistent symptoms were headache (22%), runny or stuffy nose (19%), abdominal discomfort (18%), fatigue (17%), and diarrhea (13%).

Long COVID was nearly seven times more likely among COVID-19 patients who experienced hair loss and about three times more likely among those who reported headaches and sore throats.

Also a long term COVID-19 was seen more than five times as common among people with obesity. However, the researchers said there was a lack of evidence that long COVID risk was related to age, gender, race and ethnicity, smoking status, or other chronic conditions such as diabetes or asthma. Previous studies have indicated that these factors could play a role in long COVID risks.

The data in the study doesn’t include information about vaccines and  major virus variants such as Delta or Omicron. So that will be important to see in the next studies about this topic. Right now, the definition varies wildly across studies, leading to a big range in prevalence estimates

Source: 

Qiao Wu, Jennifer A. Ailshire & Eileen M. Crimmins (July 8, 2022). Long COVID and symptom trajectory in a representative sample of Americans in the first year of the pandemic. Science reports Nature. Retrieved from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-15727-0 

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Photo by Nick Shuliahin on Unsplash.