Long Covid could be after mild illness

Researchers at Dublin’s Trinity College have presented the first global study to assess lung function and respiratory symptoms in patients who have had COVID19 from mild to severe.

The team found that fatigue, ill-health and breathlessness were all common following COVID-19 but the symptoms unrelated to the severity of the initial infection — meaning some of those who contracted a mild case of the virus still suffered the after effects.

The study from Trinity is also the first to include patients who were not hospitalised during acute infection and followed the recommended assessment algorithm for post-COVID patients.

The research, led by Dr Liam Townsend, Research Fellow, Department of Cli nical Medicine, Trinity College and St James’s Hospital, Dublin, is the largest study of postCOVID lung assessment in the world so far.

Researchers looked at a number of measures of recovery for 153 patients who were followed in an outpatient clinic for 75 days after their COVID-19 diagnoses.

The good news is that the findings suggest that COVID-19 does not cause significant fibrosis, with lung scarring seen on CT scans of only 4 per cent of patients, following xray detection of earlier abnormalities in a larger group.

But 62 percent of patients felt they had not returned to full health, while 47 per cent were classified as having fatigue.

Patients who felt they had to exert themselves during moderate exercise also reported they felt fatigued and in poor health.

The length of time a patient had to stay in hospital recovering from Covid-19 and their level of frailty were factors for them covering less distance in the ‘walk test’ element of the research.

The findings show significant symptom burden, but a relatively low rate of abnormal objective findings.

These results add to previously published work, including in the area of post-COVID fatigue which suggest that there is still no simple diagnostic test for long Covid, nor is there a particular cause like severe symptoms initially as those with mild forms of the illness still found themselves with long-reaching symptoms. As such, researchers said the diagnosis is based on the patient’s own reported symptoms.