Scientists narrow down long Covid symptoms to just 7 – do you recognise the signs?

MOST people who contract Covid will recover in a few days.

But for some, they’re left with long-term symptoms that can make daily life a struggle.

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More than a million Britons are long reporting Covid a year after being infected, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) previously showed.

Medical professionals previously warned that the list of symptoms associated with the disease could stretch as long as 62 years – with sufferers suffering from problems like hair loss and even reduced libido.

Now experts in the US say they’ve narrowed that list down to just seven symptoms.

Writing in the Open Forum Infectious Disease, they studied over 17,000 patients diagnosed with Covid at 112 healthcare facilities.

They found that the top seven reported ongoing problems were:

1. palpitations
2. fatigue
3. hair loss
4. joint pain
5. chest pain
6. shortness of breath (dyspnea)
7. obesity

Chi-Ren Shyu, the director of the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics, said the research will help medical professionals understand the condition.

“Despite an overwhelming number of long-lasting Covid symptoms previously reported in other studies, we found few symptoms specifically related to infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

“Before we examined the data, I thought we would find a large set of the symptoms specifically associated with long Covid, but that was not the case.”

“Now researchers will be able to better understand how SARS-CoV-2 can mutate or evolve, creating new connections that we may not have known about before.

“In the future, we can use electronic medical records to quickly identify subsets of patients who may be suffering from these long-term health problems,” Shyu added.

A previous study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) also found that most long-term Covid symptoms develop after a mild infection.

However, experts said that while they linger for several months, they eventually disappear within a year.

Another study, published in the Nature journal, identified key groups and behaviors that put people at increased risk of long-term illness with Covid.

They suggested younger people, women and people from a black, mixed race or other ethnic group were at greater risk of contracting Covid long after contracting the virus.

People from poorer backgrounds, smokers, and people who were overweight or obese have also been linked to persistent symptoms.

Meanwhile, experts have warned that some people who have long had Covid are developing interstitial lung disease (ILD).

In severe cases, the disease is fatal without a lung transplant.

ILD is a group of disorders that cause inflammation and make it harder for the lungs to get enough oxygen.