Long COVID symptoms can linger for two years, study shows

People infected with even mild cases of COVID-19 remain at heightened risk for heart problems, blood clots, diabetes, neurologic complications and other health problems for up to two years, according to a new study.

There have been studies examining the symptoms that have become known as “long COVID,” but the analysis published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine purports to be the first to track the risks of those issues beyond a few months or even a year post-infection.

According to the analysis, people who were hospitalized with severe infections were most at risk for longer-term health issues and death for the two-year period of the study.

Risks remained high for about two-thirds of the conditions in the analysis, including blood clotting issues, musculoskeletal problems, cardiovascular issues, kidney disorders and gastrointestinal problems.

Even people who were infected and not hospitalized remained at risk for some longer-term health problems. 

Although the risk of death waned to virtually nothing after six months, that group still had higher chances of developing gastrointestinal trouble, clotting issues, diabetes, fatigue and musculoskeletal problems. 

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and used data from its electronic health records. It examined nearly 140,000 veterans infected with COVID-19 and nearly 6 million individuals with no known infection.

The authors acknowledged the VA population is mostly older and male, which may limit the generalizability of study findings to the nonveteran population. 

Additionally, the study included only patients infected in 2020 because it involved follow-ups over the course oovermeant people were infected before coronavirus vaccines were widely available, before antiviral treatments such as Paxlovid had been developed, and before people began to build up immunity from infections of different variants. 

The landscape is different today, and evidence is clear vaccines and early treatment can help curb the risk of long COVID. 

Still, the findings highlight the substantial cumulative burden of health loss due to post-infection health problems associated with long COVID “and call for attention to the care needs of people with long-term health effects due to SARS-CoV-2,” the study’s researchers wrote.

“It is clear that the burden of health loss will not only impact patients and their quality of life but also potentially contribute to a decline in life expectancy, and may impact labor participation, economic productivity and societal wellbeing,” the authors wrote.