Elderly people are at risk at the beginning of COVID-19 infection, but if it persists, younger people suffer more.
A new study has shown that long-term COVID-19 (Long Covid) hits young patients more severely than elderly patients. This is what the health and medicine webzine ‘Health Day’ reported on the 25th (current time) based on a paper by researchers at Northwestern University in the United States published in the Annals of Neurology.
“The impact of Long Covid has disproportionately affected young working-age adults, who provide much of the workforce, productivity, and innovation in our society,” said study lead author Igor Koralnik, co-director of the COVID-19 Integrative Center at Northwestern University Feinsburg School of Medicine. “There are exchange rate issues and obstacles occurring,” he pointed out. Neurological symptoms of Long Covid include headaches, numbness and tingling, loss of smell and taste, blurred vision, depression, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, and cognitive decline.
“Deaths from COVID-19 continue to decrease, but there are still people who are repeatedly infected and can contract long COVID in the process,” said Koralnick, who is also the chair of the Department of Neuroinfectious Diseases and Global Neurology at Feinsburg Medical School. “Despite vaccinations and boosters, about 30% of Covid patients are showing long Covid symptoms,” he said.
The study involved 1,300 patients initially diagnosed with long Covid at Northwestern University’s COVID-19 clinic. The researchers found that only 200 of them had early COVID-19 symptoms (such as pneumonia) severe enough to require hospitalization.
The researchers tracked the outcomes of these patients for an average of 10 months after they were first infected with COVID-19. Among the initially hospitalized patients, the prevalence was high in the elderly aged 65 years or older, but in the case of long Covid patients whose symptoms persisted even after 10 months, the symptom burden and prevalence were found to be relatively low in the elderly. On the other hand, the neurological symptoms of Long Covid appeared more clearly in younger people under the age of 65, and as a result, the decline in quality of life was found to be more frequent.
The researchers pointed out that long Covid patients frequently develop various neurological symptoms, regardless of the severity when they first contracted Covid-19. “This study shows that people of all ages suffering from long Covid need to be provided with the treatment and rehabilitation services they need to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life,” said Koralnick.
The paper can be found at the following link:
Source: kormedi.com
