In a new study, researchers found that more than three-quarters of COVID-19 patients have at least one ongoing symptom six months after initially becoming unwell.
They looked at the long-term effects of COVID-19 infection on people hospitalized in Wuhan, China.
They found reveals that the most common symptom to persist is fatigue or muscle weakness (63% of patients), with patients also frequently experiencing sleep difficulties (26%). Anxiety or depression was reported among 23% of patients.
Patients who were severely ill in the hospital more often had impaired lung function and abnormalities detected in chest imaging—which could indicate organ damage—six months after symptom onset.
Levels of neutralizing antibodies fell by more than half (52.5%) after six months in 94 patients whose immune response was tested at the peak of the infection, raising concerns about the possibility of being re-infected by the virus.
The research was conducted by a team at China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University.
Little is known about the long-term health effects of COVID-19 as few follow-up studies have so far been carried out.
Those that have been conducted looked only at a small number of cases over a short follow-up period (typically around three months after discharge).
In the study, the team tested 1,733 COVID-19 patients who were discharged from Jin Yin-tan Hospital in Wuhan, China, between January 7th and May 29th, 2020.
The findings indicate that most patients continue to live with at least some of the effects of the virus after leaving the hospital, and highlights a need for post-discharge care, particularly for those who experience severe infections.
The work also underscores the importance of conducting longer follow-up studies in larger populations in order to understand the full spectrum of effects that COVID-19 can have on people.
One author of the study is Professor Bin Cao, from the National Center for Respiratory Medicine.
The study is published in The Lancet.
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