Brain fog, extreme fatigue, and heart issues can all be symptoms of long COVID.
There are a lot of issues people can suffer from after a coronaviruses infections.
According to a large study of nearly 500,000 UK adults published in the journal Nature Medicine on July 25th, hair loss, difficulty ejaculating, and a reduced libido may all be more common than you think.
Doctors and scientists who treat and research long COVID have known about the new data for a long time. The coronaviruses can do a lot of strange things to a person's body, but why and how it affects certain individuals and not others is not well understood.
Amy Proal, a microbiologist at PolyBio Research Foundation, told Insider that her reaction to the study would be "yes, sounds about right."
When you start to account for these symptoms, the effects of this virus are immense.
Some of the most common issues in the British study are not often mentioned in the literature of international health agencies. There are 15 COVID symptoms that are not noted in official guidance or major study results from the World Health Organization, National Institute of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the US Department of Health and Human Services.
"Anybody who's been following patients with long COVID knows that these are common," Azola said.
Between 5% and 30% of COVID-19 patients may suffer a long-term effect of their infections. There is a wide range of long COVID presentations and people don't always agree on what counts. For a person's issues to be considered a case of long COVID, their symptoms will persist for more than a year after an initial viral illness is over.
According to Proal, the study emphasizes the need to go beyond the most conventional symptoms that are assumed in these conditions, and actually just measure a much wider range of symptoms that may not immediately come to mind.
Problems with sexual function, reduced appetite, trouble peeing, and watery eyes can all be part of the autonomic nervous system disfunction. Azola said that patients can experience "exaggerated" allergic responses, which can lead to itchy, dry skin, or swollen eyes and lips.
Azola says it's important for the general public to understand that a wide array of long COVID issues is not a made up thing.
She said that it was disabling. People have fatigue and not want to do things.
There is no cure for chronic bronchitis. Azola says most of the care she does for long COVID patients is symptom managing.
Current COVID-19 vaccines can help reduce the chances of someone developing long COVID, but they are not perfect at preventing it. The condition is similar to other issues that have been related to viral illnesses.
Proal said thatViruses are really, really clever. They have a lot of crazy strategies that they use to drive a lot of symptoms and infections.
Akiko Iwasaki, a long COVID expert at Yale, spoke at a White House summit on next generation COVID vaccines July 26 and said that he thinks it happens because the virus spreads enough throughout the body.
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