There’s the lingering COVID-19 virus, but a long cold and flu?
It’s not only COVID-19 that’s lingering for the sick. New research published in the journal The Lancet supports the idea of “long colds” and “long flus.”
Two studies, which compared a breadth of symptoms and health outcomes from COVID infection as well as respiratory illnesses such as influenza and colds, found that COVID infection leads to worse health outcomes than respiratory infection — but that cold and flu alone are not always mild and transient, with many reporting debilitating symptoms thatstick around for months.
“One major lesson I draw from this is that we should not trivialize these acute infections,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and senior author of one of the two studies. “They have profound health consequences.”
In addition to the circulation of respiratory illnesses like RSV and flu, COVID spiked during the holidays, with a 12% increase in emergencydepartment visits throughout the U.S., per Dec. 23 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The CDC and independent researchers have estimated 18 million Americans have had or currently havesymptoms of long COVID.
A body of research has shown that chronic illness and pain can reduce quality of life, and that people with chronic and unresolved symptoms are not always taken seriously by doctors.
“There’s always been post-viral syndromes,” said Amy CrawfordFaucher, vice chair of Allegheny Health Network’s Primary Care Institute. “They’ve been very difficult for people to live with because they felt crappy, and no one would tell them why.”
There’s evidence of this as far back as the 19th century, when the so-called Russian flu swept the globe and led to reports of persistent neurological conditions, weakness and fatigue.
And following the 1918 Great Influenza pandemic, reports came of a neurological condition with flulike symptoms and fatigue, followed by chronic Parkinsonianlike symptoms, Giulia Vivaldi, a statistician and epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London and first author on a recent study comparing long COVID and