A new investigation studied the risks and health challenges that people face during the three years following a COVID-19 diagnosis. The analysis, published in Nature Medicine, included 135,161 individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and 5,206,835 uninfected controls from the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
A key finding highlighted the significant decrease in risk of death one year after a SARS-CoV-2 infection among those not hospitalized for the virus. This demographic accounts for most people who have had COVID-19. For those who are hospitalized, however, the risk of death decreases but remains elevated, with a 29% higher risk of death in the third year when compared with those who were not hospitalized.
In terms of developing new or ongoing health problems post-COVID, risks declined for everyone over the post-virus three-year study period. Again, non-hospitalized patients fared better, with long-term health challenges decreasing by approximately 82% between the first and third year. For hospitalized individuals, the risk of developing new health issues also declined but remained notable, with around 25% of hospitalized patients experiencing significant long-term health effects even in the third year.
The study also spotlighted a significant and persistent health effect on those who were hospitalized during the acute phase of COVID-19. Those patients, data reported, face a higher and more prolonged risk of ongoing health problems across multiple organ systems, including neurologic, pulmonary and gastrointestinal disorders. The long-term effects on hospitalized patients were notably higher, indicating a severe and lasting effect on their health.
“We aren’t sure why the virus’s effects linger for so long,” said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a Washington University clinical epidemiologist and a global leader in long COVID research. “Possibly it has to do with viral persistence, chronic inflammation, immune dysfunction or all the above. We tend to think of infections as mostly short-term illnesses with health effects that manifest around the time of infection. Our data challenges this notion. I feel COVID-19 continues to teach us — and this is an important new lesson — that a brief, seemingly innocuous or benign encounter with the virus can still lead to health problems years later.”
