{"id":7486,"date":"2023-09-25T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=7486"},"modified":"2023-09-25T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T18:00:00","slug":"long-covid-linked-to-multiple-organ-changes-research-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=7486","title":{"rendered":"Long Covid linked to multiple organ changes, research suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

23\/09\/2023<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors of the new study, which was published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, said it marks a \u201cstep forward\u201d in helping long Covid sufferers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study is the first to look at magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of multiple organs \u2014 the brain, heart, liver, kidneys and lungs \u2014 after being hospitalised with Covid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It compared the organ scans of 259 adults hospitalised with Covid across the UK in 2020-2021 with a control group of 52 people who never contracted the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly a third of the Covid patients had abnormalities in more than one organ an average of five months after leaving hospital, the study found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those hospitalised with Covid were 14 times more likely to have lung abnormalities, and were three times more likely to have abnormalities in their brain, it said. However hearts and livers appeared to be more resilient, the researchers added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abnormalities in the brain included a higher rate of white brain lesions, which have been linked to mild cognitive decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scarring and signs of inflammation were among the changes seen in lungs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concrete evidence<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People with multiple organ abnormalities were four times more likely to report severe mental and physical impairment, making them \u201cunable to perform their daily activities,\u201d lead author Betty Raman from Oxford University told an online press conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study was conducted during an earlier phase of the pandemic, before mass immunity from vaccination and prior infection blunted the overall severity of Covid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also did not cover the less severe Omicron variants which remain dominant around the world. ;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the Covid group was slightly older and generally less healthy than the control group, though the researchers sought to adjust their findings to account for these differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also did not cover the less severe Omicron variants which remain dominant around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But people are still being hospitalised due to the virus across the world, the researchers emphasised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Study co-author Christopher Brightling of Leicester University said the study provides \u201cconcrete evidence there are changes in a number of organs\u201d after people are hospitalised with Covid. ;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than being a cause for alarm, he said the finding is a \u201cstep forwards in terms of actually being able to help people with long Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Baldwin, a pulmonary disease specialist at Columbia University not involved in the study, said \u201cthese results suggest that long Covid is not explained by severe deficits concentrated in any one organ\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRather, the interaction of two or more abnormalities in organs might have an additive or multiplicative effect in creating physiological deficits that result in long Covid symptoms,\u201d he wrote in a Lancet comment article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23\/09\/2023 The authors of the new study, which was published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, said it marks a \u201cstep forward\u201d in helping long Covid sufferers. The study is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,207,222,253,269,286,289,292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brain","category-heart","category-hospitalizations","category-inflammation-2","category-kidney","category-liver","category-long-haul-disease","category-lung"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}