A reduction in sex drive, hallucinations and hair loss are among a broader set of lingering Covid symptoms, according to a study of people infected but not hospitalized during the pandemic.
It has long been known that the most common symptoms in the weeks and months after a coronavirus attack include loss of smell and difficulty breathing. The NHS list of common Covid symptoms also includes signs such as fatigue, rashes and brain fog.
Now researchers have been able to show that people with long-standing Covid often experience an “extremely wide” range of symptoms, including lesser-known side effects such as amnesia and the inability to perform familiar movements or commands.
The findings, published in Nature Medicine, support what many patients have repeatedly told their doctors, family members, friends and colleagues since the pandemic began more than two years ago.
Symptom patterns tend to cluster around respiratory symptoms, mental health and cognitive problems, and then a wider range of symptoms, suggests the University of Birmingham study.
As well as detecting a wider set of symptoms, the researchers also identified key groups and behaviors that put people at greater risk of developing Covid in the long term. They suggested that women, younger people and those of a black, mixed or other ethnic group were at greater risk of long Covid.
People from poorer backgrounds, smokers and people who were overweight or obese were also linked to persistent symptoms.
Lead author Dr Shamil Haroon, clinical associate professor of public health at the University of Birmingham, said: “This research validates what patients have been telling doctors and policymakers throughout the pandemic: that symptoms of Long Covid are extremely broad and cannot be fully explained by other factors such as lifestyle risk factors or chronic health conditions.
“The symptoms we have identified should help clinicians and clinical guideline developers improve the assessment of patients with long-term effects of Covid-19 and subsequently consider how this symptom burden can be best managed” .
The study found that people who tested positive for the virus reported 62 symptoms significantly more frequently 12 weeks after the initial infection than those who had not contracted the virus.
The researchers analyzed the anonymised electronic health records of 2.4 million people in the UK together with a team of doctors and researchers from England.
Data taken between January 2020 and April 2021 included 486,149 people with previous infection and 1.9 million people without signs of infection after matching other clinical diagnoses, using data from patients who had not been admitted to hospital .
Anuradhaa Subramanian, also from the University of Birmingham and lead author of the paper, said: “Our analyzes of risk factor data are of particular interest because they help us consider what might be causing or contributing to prolonged Covid .
“Women, for example, are more likely to have autoimmune diseases. Seeing the increased likelihood of women having Covid for a long time in our study increases our interest in investigating whether autoimmunity or other causes can explain the ‘increased risk in women.
“These observations will help further narrow the focus of factors to investigate what may be causing these persistent symptoms after an infection and how we can help patients who are experiencing them.”