Researchers at the Hebrew University have examined the prevalence of a variety of symptoms - some known and others rare - in people who have been infected with the virus and have recovered.
Testing a pen in Tel Aviv, last week
Photography:
Joshua Joseph
The results of a new study conducted by researchers from the Hebrew University, led by Prof. Masha Niv and Hadassah doctors, show that symptoms of fatigue, changes in smell and taste and difficulty breathing were common in people who contracted corona even after receiving a negative result.
46% of them reported experiencing at least one symptom even half a year after infection.
This is not the first report that many corona patients in mild to severe condition continue to suffer from various symptoms even after their recovery.
The condition may improve in some of them within a short period of time, but there are those who do not fully recover and continue to suffer for a long time from side effects, which lead to medical damage.
It is now customary to describe this phenomenon as Long COVID, and to treat it as an integral part of the disease even if the patient is no longer contagious.
At the same time, the hidden prevails over the visible, and researchers still do not fully understand the phenomenon.
To try to remove the mystery surrounding the ongoing symptoms of the disease after the end of the infectious phase, Prof. Masha Niv from the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition at the Faculty of Agriculture at the Hebrew University and her team, in collaboration with doctors from Hadassah Medical Center led by Dr. Sarah Israel Studies regarding the symptoms of the disease.
Were asked about about 30 symptoms
The first study, published about three months ago on the medRxiv website after a peer review, focused on the first symptoms that appear in patients who came out positive on a pen test compared to the symptoms of patients who came out negative, and the implications of the differences in locating and diagnosing corona patients.
The second article published this week in the same scientific database and expected to be published later in a scientific journal focused on the persistence of symptoms in corona patients for several months.
The research team conducted telephone interviews with 112 adult patients with mild to moderate illness.
The average age of the respondents was 35 years, with 72 of the subjects being men and 40 women.
The first questionnaire was conducted a few days after the patients became infected with the virus, and underwent a positive PCR test.
Study participants who did not recover or did not come out negative on a pen test continued to answer the symptom questionnaire about three weeks and about six weeks after infection.
The fourth questionnaire was conducted among all participants in the telephone survey, about six months after infection.
Participants were asked about about 30 different symptoms including fever, dry cough, cough with phlegm, shortness of breath, chest tightness / pain, runny nose, sore throat, muscle aches, diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea / vomiting, loss of appetite, headache, tearing Increased (tears), burning or irritation in the eyes, discharge from the eyes, white coating on the tongue (white tongue), changes in the sense of smell, taste, sight, hearing and voice and pressure in the ears.
In addition, participants were able to report additional symptoms.
Rare and strange symptoms
The results of the study show that about 46% of all patients suffered from some symptom during the six months after infection with Corona.
Of all patients, about 20% indicated that they suffer from fatigue over time, even after six months.
The second most common symptom during the six months following infection with corona is a change in smell and taste.
Next, subjects reported the symptom of difficulty breathing (9%).
Symptoms that include changes in sensations of taste and smell along with cough were also relatively common in the extent of their persistence, even after a negative marker test.
The researchers also found some evidence that the virus can cause familiar or rare and strange symptoms over time - from memory impairment and heart rhythm disorders to hand circumcision and severe hair loss.
"One of the interrogees told of a fire that almost broke out in her house because she could not smell the burnt smell that emanated from the oven, and a examinee indicated that he could not smell feces in his son's diapers," said the master Hadar Klein.
The return of the smell and taste was particularly interesting for the researchers.
Of all those who reported symptoms of loss of taste and smell after six weeks, about 65% reported persistent changes in the senses even after six months.
Some noted a persistent cough as a concomitant symptom.
"The senses recover in most patients within about three weeks, but if after about six weeks from the onset of the disease the sense of taste or smell does not return, there is a high probability that the symptom may last a long time," notes Prof. Niv.
The smell of banana as fuel
At the same time, six months after the onset of the disease, seven patients reported olfactory distortion.
"There were reports of subjects smelling familiar smells differently than they were familiar with, such as feces such as feces or sweat. One subject even smelled carbs strangely. There was someone who smelled banana as fuel, and some who complained that the smell of their perfume had changed," Klein said.
Additional results of the study, noteworthy, relate to short-term side effects.
The study found that from the first day of the disease, several symptoms usually appear together, with each patient suffering from two or more symptoms at the beginning of his illness.
Headaches, fever, dry cough and muscle aches appeared as the first symptoms that appear in more than a third of patients after the onset of the disease.
Only about 15% of patients had odor and taste changes noted as first symptoms, and usually occurred on the fourth or fifth day of the onset of the disease on average (high standard deviations due to variability in disease progression and patients' sample size being relatively small).
In 14% of the patients, fatigue was indicated as the first symptom, without being asked about the symptom in the questionnaire but reporting it independently.
"Therefore, it seems that in practice this is a more common symptom," Klein clarified.