More and more people who have spent Kovid-19 months later continue to have serious complaints. It is estimated that this applies to up to 20% of patients, and women aged between 20 and 40 are particularly affected.
Even after a relatively mild course of the disease, many patients need months to fully recover. This has recently become more common in young people, even children.
As Kovid-19 is a disease of the entire vascular and immune system, residual complaints may remain in many parts of the body or symptoms may recur. Experts suspect that this may be an autoimmune reaction. For example, hair loss may also be a consequence of Covid-19, as some people develop autoimmune antibodies against hair roots.
Disease after disease
Studies in China, conducted after the first wave of the pandemic, showed that of the hospitalized patients with Kovid-19, every second has developed the so-called. post-covid syndrome. Within six months of discharge, 76 percent of patients had at least one residual symptom. The most common complaints are exhaustion, muscle pain, sleep disturbances, depression, hair loss. However, it is not true that the elderly and patients with previous illnesses are the most affected. Experts estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of sufferers suffer from long-term effects after Kovid-19, with women between the ages of 20 and 40 being particularly affected. Austrian pulmonologist Ralph Zwick, who runs a rehabilitation clinic in Vienna, said that the condition of his 32-year-old patient was like that of an 85-year-old woman with cancer. “For us medics, this is a completely new phenomenon,” the doctor told Austria’s Der Standard.
A study conducted at the Charité Clinic in Berlin came to similar conclusions. It involved 42 patients with an average age of 36 years, 70 percent of whom were women. For six months after being cured of Kovid-19, all participants suffered from fatigue and severe fatigue. Other symptoms such as cognitive problems, headache, and muscle aches were also observed.
The British Health Institute NICE defines post-Covid as a set of symptoms that last more than 12 weeks after infection. The most common symptoms are fatigue, tiredness, memory problems, difficulty breathing, chest pain, but also cardiovascular failure and sleep disturbances, explains cardiologist Marian Göngöshi of the AKH University Clinic in Vienna, which has already been identified. ward for patients with post-Covid syndrome. It is estimated that of the approximately 500,000 people in Austria who have had Kovid-19 so far, at least 50,000 have developed the syndrome.
“Many people do not understand why they constantly feel tired or why they are suddenly hampered by the simplest actions,” said Austrian Martha Preler, a founding self-help group that now numbers 500 people. Preler had a mild form of Covid-19 last spring, but a few months later her condition began to progress.
How to counteract?
Although the virus mainly attacks the lungs, it can also affect other organs – depending on which ACE2 receptors in the body the virus attaches to. Neurologist Michael Stingle says that his patients feel very exhausted months after the illness. Some of them do not even have the strength to read a book. And it is especially worrying that many of these patients are young people in whom the disease has passed relatively easily, the doctor explains.
Known methods of rehabilitation do not help in such patients. Quite the opposite: after them, many of those affected feel even worse. “After being infected with the coronavirus, the body needs targeted therapy,” says pulmonologist Ralph Zwick. That is why his clinic has introduced special programs with exercises to restore muscle mass, to breathe properly and to overcome post-traumatic conditions.
One thing is clear now: there will be a growing need for places for patients with post-Kovid syndrome who need special therapy.
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