(ORDO NEWS) — Even one in four people do not fully recover from COVID a full year after being hospitalized with the disease, a UK study showed on Sunday, warning that long-term COVID could become common.
The study, which included more than 2,300 people, also found that women were 33% less likely to make a full recovery than men.
It also found that people who were obese were half as likely to make a full recovery, and 58 percent less likely to be those who needed mechanical ventilation.
The study examined the health of people who were discharged from 39 UK hospitals with COVID between March 2020 and April 2021 and then assessed the recovery of 807 of them after five months and one year.
According to a study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, only 26 percent reported a complete recovery after five months, and that number increased only slightly to 28.9 percent after a year.
“The limited recovery from five months to one year after hospitalization in our study on symptoms, mental health, exercise capacity, organ damage and quality of life is striking,” said study co-lead Rachel Evans of the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The most common symptoms of long-term COVID were fatigue, muscle pain, poor sleep, physical lethargy, and shortness of breath.
“Without effective treatment, long-term COVID could become a very common new long-term condition,” said study co-lead Christopher Brightling of the University of Leicester.
The study, the results of which will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, is ongoing and we will continue to monitor the health of patients.
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