In a new study from the University of Florida, researchers found that patients who survive severe COVID-19 have more than twice the risk of dying over the following year.
Unusually, the increased risk of dying was greater for patients who are under 65, and only 20% of the severe COVID-19 patients who died did so because of typical COVID complications, such as clotting disorders or respiratory failure.
The study suggests that severe COVID-19 may significantly damage long-term health and highlights the importance of preventing severe disease through vaccination.
COVID-19 can cause severe symptoms and death for vulnerable people, particularly older patients and those with certain underlying conditions.
You have likely also heard of long COVID, where symptoms such as fatigue and shortness of breath can linger for months after the infection has passed.
But how do COVID-19 patients fare in the long-term? Researchers have been tracking patients to understand the long-term impacts of the disease.
In the study, the team tracked electronic health records of 13,638 patients who underwent a PCR test for COVID-19, with 178 patients experiencing severe COVID-19, 246 mild or moderate COVID-19 and the rest testing negative.
All patients included in the study recovered from the disease, and the researchers tracked their outcomes over the next 12 months.
The study found that patients who had recovered from severe COVID-19 had a significantly greater chance of dying over the next year, compared with the uninfected and mild or moderate COVID-19 patients.
Some surprising trends emerged from the data, with severe COVID-19 patients aged under 65 demonstrating a 233% increased chance of dying, compared with the uninfected.
This was larger than the increased chance of dying experienced by severe COVID-19 patients aged over 65, compared with the uninfected.
As these deaths frequently occurred long after the initial infection had passed, they may never have been linked to COVID-19 by the patients’ families or doctors.
Moreover, most of the deaths that occurred in severe COVID-19 survivors were not linked with common complications from the disease, such as respiratory or cardiovascular issues.
In fact, 80% of such deaths occurred for a wide variety of reasons that are not typically associated with COVID-19.
This suggests that the patients had experienced an overall decline in their health that left them vulnerable to various ailments.
Mild or moderate COVID-19 patients did not have a strongly increased mortality risk compared with the uninfected, highlighting the importance of reducing the chances of severe disease through vaccination.
If you care about severe COVID, please read studies about people with these blood types may have lower risk of severe COVID-19 and findings of this stuff in the body may prevent severe COVID-19 infection.
For more information about COVID and your health please see recent studies about a new way to treat severe COVID-19 and results showing that these 2 anti-inflammatory drugs may improve recovery from severe COVID-19.
The study is published in Frontiers in Medicine. One author of the study is Prof Arch Mainous.
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