2024-07-22 16:07:04
Ziyad Al-Aly is one of the world’s leading Long Covid researchers, and her words carry weight. Now an epidemiologist from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is reporting with a surprising analysis: According to this, the risk of suffering long-term consequences after corona infection has been significantly reduced since the beginning of the pandemic. On the one hand because vaccines become available, on the other hand because some problematic virus variants have been shown to spread over time.
“It is a rare opportunity that I have good news to report about this virus,” said Al-Aly, referring to the findings that he and his team have now published in “New England Journal of Medicine(NEJM) published. The researchers have already assessed how much the burden of disease caused by Long Covid really is in the population, which parts of the body are damaged and how the disease differs from chronic problems after the disease.
After a corona infection, not only fatigue, difficulty concentrating or breathing problems can last for several weeks or months, but also problems with the heart and kidneys, muscles, joints or intestines.
It is already known that the risk of such chronic symptoms depends, among other things, on how severe the infection is and whether there are additional diseases, such as diabetes. However, new results now show that it also depends on the type of pandemic wave that is infected.
For their study, Al-Aly and colleagues used millions of anonymized medical records from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, one of the largest healthcare providers in the United States. The team compared people infected with the original strain of Sars-CoV-2 in 2020 with patients who contracted the delta variant in 2021 or the omicron variant of the pathogen in 2022. “Omicron” includes parts- its molecular body, with the so-called flirt variations of the current heat wave, continues to shape the impact process.
Each virus variant has its own fingerprint
The clear result of the analysis: Omicron seems to be much less likely to have long-term consequences than Delta or even the original strain of the virus. For the latter, researchers found that 10.4 percent of all patients were affected by Long Covid within one year of infection. For Delta infections the value is 9.5 and for Omicron it is 7.7 percent. It is clear that the molecular differences between the virus types are also reflected in the body’s reaction to the pathogen, Al-Aly said.
“People tend to see Sars-CoV-2 as a homogeneous virus,” said the Covid-19 expert, “but each variant has its own fingerprint.” of vaccines became a concern during the pandemic. While no vaccines were available at the beginning of the epidemic, patients in the Delta and Omicron era were able to benefit greatly from the vaccines.
US epidemiologist Ziyad Al-Aly has been researching Long Covid since the start of the pandemic
Quelle: MATT MILLER/THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON BOOK OF MEDICINE
In fact, the Long Covid rate among people with Delta infection fell from 9.5 to 5.3 percent if they had already received the vaccine. In the Omicron wave, the rate even fell from 7.7 to 3.5 percent. This means that even if the vaccine cannot prevent infection, it still reduces the long-term consequences of the disease.
“Vaccines can prevent many, although not all, cases of Long Covid,” US doctor Clifford Rosen noted in one accompanying NEJM editor to research. At the same time, he pointed out that the analysis was based primarily on the medical records of US veterans – older white men – and that it provided a picture of the first two years of the pandemic. This makes it difficult to predict how the Long Covid problem will develop in the future. “New cases may continue to occur,” emphasized Clifford.
“The Long Covid season is not over yet,” Al-Aly agreed. “It’s really good news that the risk has gone down. But we know that millions of people already have Long Covid, and millions more will get it. “
It is also noteworthy that, according to the study, the omicron difference is less likely to cause damage to the heart, brain, lungs or kidneys. However, Omicron seems to cause metabolic problems and gastrointestinal diseases more often than other types of coronavirus.
So it is conceivable that long-term consequences will become noticeable in the future, especially in the form of metabolic or gastrointestinal complaints, which often follow an infection.
Therefore, Al-Aly warned that we should not underestimate the infection and its consequences: “We must not become careless,” said the epidemiologist. An important factor to keep the rate of non-diseases as low as possible is regular vaccination: “If we stop vaccinating,” said Al-Aly, “the risk is likely to increase to him.”
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