{"id":5931,"date":"2024-05-30T05:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T09:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=5931"},"modified":"2024-05-30T20:33:38","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T00:33:38","slug":"covid-can-cause-new-health-problems-to-appear-years-after-infection-according-to-a-study-of-more-than-130000-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/covid-can-cause-new-health-problems-to-appear-years-after-infection-according-to-a-study-of-more-than-130000-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID can cause new health problems to appear years after infection, according to a study of more than 130,000 patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Even as national institutions struggle to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/01\/24\/experts-patients-warn-congress-long-covid-government-blows-through-billion-cure-health-carolyn-barber\/\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">coordinate<\/a> meaningful trials for possible long COVID treatments, researchers continue to tally the damage. New findings suggest that the disease\u2019s reach isn\u2019t merely long\u2014it\u2019s still growing.<\/p>\n<p>Three years after their initial bouts with COVID-19, patients who\u2019d once been hospitalized with the virus remained at \u201csignificantly elevated\u201d risk of death or worsening health from long COVID complications, according to a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-024-02987-8\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">paper<\/a> published May&nbsp;30 in <em>Nature Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Even among those whose initial cases didn\u2019t require a hospital stay, the threat of long COVID and several of its associated issues remained real, the researchers found. And cumulatively, at three years, long COVID results in 91 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) per 1,000 people\u2014<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.healthdata.org\/research-analysis\/about-gbd\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">DALYs<\/a> being a measure of years lost to poor health or premature death. That is a higher incidence than either <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/well\/article\/oral-health-connection-diabetes-heart-disease-alzheimers\/\" rel=\"noopener\">heart disease<\/a> or cancer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople are developing new-onset disease as the result of an infection that they had three years ago,\u201d says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and lead author of the study. \u201cIt challenges the notion that these viruses are sort of self-contained or that after the acute first phase, they become inconsequential.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With more than 130,000 patients, the study is by far the largest so far to track the progress of the virus over a full three-year period. It expands on work by Al-Aly and others at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/medicine.wustl.edu\/news\/long-covid-still-worrisome-2-years-after-infection\/\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">two-year mark<\/a> that found patients had elevated risk for long-COVID-related conditions that included diabetes, lung problems, fatigue, blood clots, and gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal disorders.<\/p>\n<p>At three years, Al-Aly tells <em>Fortune<\/em>, the primary complications among those with mild initial COVID cases were found in the neurological, GI, and pulmonary systems. The persistent risk among those who\u2019d been hospitalized, meanwhile, extended to seven organ systems and included severe conditions such as strokes, heart attacks, heart failure, and even Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>The study included nationally recognized researchers Al-Aly and coauthor Dr. Eric Topol, executive vice president and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. It drew from patients within the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care system. As such, the scientists note, the demography skews more male, white, and slightly older than other patient studies might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even as national institutions struggle to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/01\/24\/experts-patients-warn-congress-long-covid-government-blows-through-billion-cure-health-carolyn-barber\/\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">coordinate<\/a> meaningful trials for possible long COVID treatments, researchers continue to tally the damage. New findings suggest that the disease\u2019s reach isn\u2019t merely long\u2014it\u2019s still growing.<\/p>\n<p>Three years after their initial bouts with COVID-19, patients who\u2019d once been hospitalized with the virus remained at \u201csignificantly elevated\u201d risk of death or worsening health from long COVID complications, according to a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-024-02987-8\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">paper<\/a> published May&nbsp;30 in <em>Nature Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Even among those whose initial cases didn\u2019t require a hospital stay, the threat of long COVID and several of its associated issues remained real, the researchers found. And cumulatively, at three years, long COVID results in 91 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) per 1,000 people\u2014<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.healthdata.org\/research-analysis\/about-gbd\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noopener\">DALYs<\/a> being a measure of years lost to poor health or premature death. That is a higher incidence than either <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/well\/article\/oral-health-connection-diabetes-heart-disease-alzheimers\/\" rel=\"noopener\">heart disease<\/a> or cancer.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/covid-can-cause-new-health-problems-to-appear-years-after-infection-according-to-a-study-of-more-than-130000-patients\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">COVID can cause new health problems to appear years after infection, according to a study of more than 130,000 patients<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,18,71,36,211,11,8,14,40,51],"class_list":["post-5931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cardiovascular-disease","tag-covid-19","tag-heart-attacks","tag-heart-disease","tag-heart-failure","tag-long-covid","tag-research","tag-sars-cov-2","tag-strokes","tag-united-states","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5931"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5940,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions\/5940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}