59% Of Covid Patients Suffer Organ Impairment, 29% Multi-Organ Damage: Study

News Desk

Islamabad: A new study of organ damage in long Covid patients over 12 months reveal that organ damage continued in 59 per cent of Covid-19 patients a year following the onset of symptoms, even in those who were not critically ill at the time of their initial diagnosis.

The comprehensive study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, focused on patients reporting extreme breathlessness, cognitive dysfunction and poor health-related quality of life. As many as 536 patients were studied, 13 per cent were hospitalised when first diagnosed with corona virus and 32 per cent of people who participated in the study were healthcare workers.

The findings show that multi-organ impairment, with persistent symptoms and diminished function at six and twelve months, affected 29 per cent of individuals with protracted Covid. Six months after receiving their initial diagnosis, 331 (62 per cent) of the 536 patients in the study had organ impairment.

These patients were followed up six months later with a 40-minute multi-organ MRI scan (Perspectums CoverScan) which was analysed in Oxford, the study said. “Symptoms were common at six and twelve months, and associated with female gender, younger age and single organ impairment,” said University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Informatics Clinical Data Science Professor Amitava Banerjee.

Between six and twelve months, the symptoms were reported to have subsided in the research. According to the study, extreme breathlessness decreased from being reported by 38 per cent of patients to 30 per cent, while cognitive dysfunction decreased from 48 to 38 per cent. The percentage of patients with poor health-related quality of life decreased from 57 to 45 per cent.

“Many studies support the idea that symptoms might last up to a year in those with long Covid. We now add that one in four individuals with long Covid has impairment in two or more organs, and that three out of five individuals have impairment in at least one organ, often without symptoms,” stated Amitava Banerjee.

“A fundamental worry for people, health systems and economies is the impact on quality of life and time away from work, particularly for healthcare personnel. Although many of the healthcare workers in our study had no history of sickness, 19 of the 172 of them were still symptomatic at follow-up and off work at a median of 180 days,” informed Banerjee

“According to the researchers, the underlying processes of long Covid are still unclear because there is no evidence from symptoms, blood tests, or MRI to definitively characterise long Covid subtypes,” the study stated.

It further added that future research must consider associations between symptoms, multi-organ impairment and function in larger cohorts.

“Organ impairment in long Covid has implications for symptoms, quality of life and longer-term health, signalling the need for prevention and integrated care for such patients,” Professor Banerjee concluded.