In many post-Covid patients, exhaustion lasts a long time

People who suffer from the post-Covid syndrome of morbid exhaustion after a corona infection are often still affected after more than a year and a half. According to information from Tuesday, this is the result of a study by the Berlin University Hospital Charité. For this purpose, 106 participants were studied over a period of 20 months, who still suffered from severe fatigue six months after their corona infection – as the ‘lead depletion’ study shows.

On average, the recovery takes longer the more severe the corona infection was. In many, the symptoms subside within a year, but this is not true for all patients. “Unfortunately, our data shows that post-Covid patients with severe fatigue are still sick more than a year and a half after their infection,” explains study author Judith Bellmann-Strobl of the Charité. Only half of them – who did not show the full picture of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) – show slow improvement in at least some symptoms.

However, the researchers made an observation in the study that can be used in the future to estimate the course of the disease in post-Covid patients: the more strength the patients had in their hands at the onset of the disease, the less pronounced their symptoms. were up to 20 months later.

Hand strength was not only a parameter of initial disease severity, but could also predict how CFS disease would progress, explained Carmen Scheibenbogen, study author and acting director of the Institute of Medical Immunology at the Charité and head of the Charité Fatigue Center.

“However, before we can use manual force for prognosis, we need to confirm its validity with further research,” she added. According to current information from the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 36 million people are living with lung Covid in Europe. Most of them are limited in their daily lives and can no longer lead a normal life. The study now shows that most CFS patients are “persistently seriously ill.”

In addition to the intensive search for effective therapies, the doctor therefore advocated care facilities in which those affected are cared for ‘in a multidisciplinary manner’ on the basis of current scientific knowledge and clinical experience. The research has been published in the journal eClinicalMedicine.

(jam/sda/afp)