Organ damage lasts up to a year for 59% of long Covid patients

It is widely accepted how COVID-19 affects us immediately after the initial infection. Most people are wary of the symptoms that can occur. However, three years on since the start of the pandemic, we are still learning about the long-term effects of the disease.

The research, by scientists from the UK, noted that 331 patients (62 percent) were identified with organ impairment six months after their initial diagnosis.

These patients were followed up six months later with a 40-minute multi-organ MRI scan, analysed in Oxford.

This confirmed that 29 percent of patients with long Covid had multi-organ impairment, with persistent symptoms and reduced function at six and 12 months, and 59 percent had single organ impairment 12 months after initial diagnosis.

One of the researchers, Professor Amitava Banerjee from the UCL Institute of Health Informatics, said: “Symptoms were common at six and 12 months and associated with female gender, younger age and single organ impairment.”

“Many healthcare workers in our study had no prior illness, but of 172 such participants, 19 were still symptomatic at follow-up and off work at a median of 180 days.”

The underlying mechanisms of long Covid are still not fully understood, say the researchers, who did not find evidence by symptoms, blood investigations or MRI to clearly define long Covid subtypes.

They say that future research must consider associations between symptoms, multi-organ impairment and function in larger cohorts.

Professor Banerjee concluded: “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 long Covid patients.”