This text is taken from our newsletter “Coronavirus mail” of April 25, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Only around one in four patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have fully recovered after a year, according to a British study published on Sunday. The researchers point out that being a woman and being obese increases the risk of maintaining health problems.
This study, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicineused adult patient data from 39 UK National Health Service hospitals between March 7, 2020 and April 18, 2021.
Patient recovery was assessed five months and one year after discharge from hospital.
The researchers thus took blood samples from the participants during the five-month visit to analyze the presence of various inflammatory proteins.
Some 2,320 patients were examined five months after their discharge, and 33% of them were examined one year later.
The study shows that the proportion of adults who have fully recovered does not change much between five months and one year after leaving hospital: it was 25.5% for patients examined five months later, and 28.9% for those who still had it a year later.
Being female, being obese and having been on a ventilator in hospital were all associated with a lower likelihood of feeling fully recovered after one year, the study also points out.
Some of the most common symptoms of long COVID include fatigue, muscle aches, physical sluggishness, lack of sleep, and shortness of breath.