Serious long-term consequences are also possible
Above all, neurological damage is a problem for the patient: attention, memory and concentration severely limit many long after recovery from acute Covid 19 disease.
However, it can also lead to very serious long-term effects, according to Peter Berlit, Secretary General of the German Society for Neurology: There are case reports from Singapore where forty-year-old patients suffered a stroke or thrombosis weeks after the corona disease, because the tendency to clot was apparently increased. And the course of the disease does not have to have been severe and the patient does not have to belong to a risk group:
“We are also seeing more and more younger people under 30 who had a relatively mild course of the infection and who still complain of severe concentration disorders and also fatigue, fatigue. We have a complex of symptoms here that we are only just beginning to understand. And this post-Covid -Syndromes are sure to pose a challenge to health systems around the world. ” Oliver Keppler, virologist
Individual cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome after Covid 19 disease
A very serious complication, Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), also occurs rarely. This is also an excessive immune reaction that is associated with bacteria or viruses such as the Zika virus, but which does not affect the organs, but rather the nerves, causing inflammation there and damaging the nerves: these no longer transmit stimuli , the result is muscle paralysis. Usually they start in the legs, then the paralysis spreads into the arms and further inside the body. The syndrome can go as far as complete paralysis, which also makes artificial ventilation necessary. According to an estimate by Berlit, only about one hundred of these severe corona consequences have occurred worldwide, in Germany he estimates about twenty cases. Most would, however, fully recover. But the healing takes many arduous months.
Post-Covid Syndrome or Long Covid – a new clinical picture
It is still too early to have reliable knowledge of the long-term consequences of Covid 19 disease – the disease is still too young for that. But the studies on long-term effects are ongoing, for example at the University Hospital and the University of Würzburg with the Covidom research project. Whether and how many of the long-term effects are perhaps no longer curable is also still unknown:
“We will be able to provide a valid answer to the question of possible late-stage damage in the course of 2021 at the earliest. Fortunately, neurological symptoms can regress for up to a year.” Peter Berlit, General Secretary of the German Society for Neurology
However, the long-term effects are not about isolated exceptions or individual damage, but about a separate disease pattern belonging to Corona, which the US researchers want to clarify with their study on the various Covid-19 phases: Even if the acute infection and If the disease situation is defused by the coronavirus, Covid-19 will keep medicine busy for a long time – as a whole spectrum of diseases in connection with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus.
The chief physician of the Lung Center at the Munich Clinic, Joachim Meyer, shares this attitude:
“It remains a new disease that we have to get to know.” Joachim Meyer, pulmonologist, Lung Center Munich Clinic
However, Meyer has one assumption: The occurrence of long-term effects after a corona infection could well be related to the viral load, i.e. to the amount of corona viruses to which one was exposed. This is precisely why it is so important to protect yourself from infection with masks.
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