Study reveals seven in ten patients hospitalised with #COVID-19 not fully recovered five months post-discharge
▻https://le.ac.uk/news/2021/march/covid-19-patients-not-fully-recovered
Étude (en cours) #PHOSP-COVID, britannique sur 1077 patients,
[...] “While the profile of patients being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 is disproportionately male and from an ethnic minority background, our study finds that those who have the most severe prolonged symptoms tend to be white women aged approximately 40 to 60 who have at least two long term health conditions, such as asthma or diabetes.”
The researchers were able to the classify types of recovery into four different groups or ‘clusters’ based on the participants’ mental and physical health impairments.
One cluster group in particular showed impaired cognitive function, or what has colloquially been called ‘#brain_fog’. Patients in this group tended to be older and male. Cognitive impairment was striking even when taking education levels into account, suggesting a different underlying mechanism compared to other symptoms.
[...] much of the wide variety of persistent problems was not explained by the severity of the acute illness - the latter largely driven by acute lung injury - indicating other, possibly more systemic, underlying mechanisms.”
The research has also uncovered a potential biological factor behind some post-COVID symptoms.
Professor Louise Wain, GSK/British Lung Foundation Chair in Respiratory Research at the University of Leicester and co-investigator for the PHOSP-COVID study, said: “When we looked at the symptom severity of patients five months after they were discharged from hospital, we found that in all but the mildest cases of persistent post-COVID symptoms, levels of a chemical called C-reactive protein [CRP], which is associated with inflammation, were elevated.
“From previous studies, it is known that systemic inflammation is associated with poor recovery from illnesses across the disease spectrum. We also know that autoimmunity, where the body has an immune response to its own healthy cells and organs, is more common in middle-aged women. This may explain why post-COVID syndrome seems to be more prevalent in this group, but further investigation is needed to fully understand the processes. The evidence for different recovery ‘clusters’, and ongoing inflammation, really is important in guiding how we conduct further research into the underlying biological mechanisms that drive ‘Long-COVID’.”
One of the purposes of the PHOSP-COVID study is to measure the impact of medicines given during hospitalisation to see if they affect patients’ recovery. Early indicators from the study show that while giving corticosteroids is a factor in reducing mortality in hospital, it does not appear to have an impact on longer term recovery.
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