There is more and more evidence that patients will experience the effects of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection for years, reports Bloomberg.
The Effects of COVID-19 on the Body
In a text summarizing the current state of knowledge about the health effects of COVID-19, Bloomberg describes problems indicated by the first studies of patients who have had the disease: worse condition of the lungs, heart and liver, breathing problems and fatigue months after the infection.
The portal cites the opinion of prof. Nicholas Hart, the British physician who treated Prime Minister Boris Johnson and compared COVID-19 to the polio virus epidemic that caused permanent damage to the health of millions of people in the 50s.
«COVID-19 is the polio of this generation. (…) A large number of patients will have physical, cognitive and psychological disorders after their illness that will require long-term care, »Hart wrote on Twitter.
These conclusions result from studies on patients with a history of disease, including in Wuhan and Hong Kong. Observation of 20 recovering Hong Kong patients showed that half of them had not returned to normal lung function two months after having COVID-19 and were “below healthy levels”.
In turn, the April tests of blood samples of 25 Wuhan patients showed that the deterioration of the organism’s efficiency concerned both those who had mild and more severe symptoms of the disease. Computed tomography tests showed lung injuries in 66 out of 70 patients discharged from the hospital.
In addition, as Los Angeles doctors examining patient data from Italy and China have shown, patients who have recovered from COVID-19 may have chronic complications in the circulatory system.
As Bloomberg points out, experience from the epidemic of another coronavirus – SARS – suggests that the complications may be long-lasting. A 2017 Chinese study of 25 patients found that the effects of SARS can be felt even 12 years after the disease. Compared to the rest of the patients, people after SARS were more likely to become infected and had higher cholesterol levels. More than half of them also had another lung disease afterwards.
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