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People hospitalize for either COVID-19 or the influenza look a heighten risk of aesculapian issues , infirmary admission and dying in the 18 months after they ’re complete .
That ’s allot to a fresh study , published Thursday ( Dec. 14 ) in the journalThe Lancet Infectious Diseases , that compared the long - term outcome for patients sickened with either viral contagion .
Both the flu and COVID-19 can cause lingering health problems, a new study shows.
consciousness aroundlong COVID — recollective - term symptoms that persist or newly emerge calendar month to years after an initial COVID-19 infection — has steadily grown since thecoronavirusSARS - CoV-2 first appeared . But the young study spotlight another significant public health load : what the written report authors informally call " long flu . "
Historically , multitude have thought of viral sickness likeinfluenzaas mostly transient , or " acute , " sicknesses . But that idea does n’t account for the impacts that sometimes hover in the " post - acute " phase , sound out fourth-year field of study authorDr . Ziyad Al - Aly , a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and chief of the research and pedagogy service at the Veterans Affairs ( VA ) Saint Louis Health Care System .
" I consider we ’ve ignored this for a long time , and the COVID-19pandemickind of put it in the spotlight , " Al - Aly told Live Science . As see with COVID-19 , " grippe can lead to foresighted - terminal figure problems , " he said .
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However , when you compare COVID-19 and the flu head - to - head , the long - terminal figure risk tie to a COVID-19 hospitalization insurance are more numerous and more severe than those tie to flu , Al - Aly emphasized , although the flu has more sound effects on the respiratory organisation , specifically .
" What we saw is that multitude with COVID-19 had a high risk of decease , hospital care and sequelae [ knock - on effects of disease ] than people with the flu , " he said . Therefore , " COVID remains a much more serious problem than seasonal influenza . "
For the new study , Al - Aly and fellow worker suck entropy from VA databases to identify people who ’d been hospitalized for either COVID-19 or the flu . They admit more than 81,000 multitude who ’d been hospitalise for COVID-19 between March 2020 and June 2022 , as well as nigh 11,000 mass who ’d been hospitalise for seasonal flu between October 2015 and February 2019 . ( The pace of grippe hospitalizations was very low between 2020 and 2022 , due to precautions taken to reduce COVID-19 spread , so those years were n’t included . )
Previous studieshave comparedthe lingering personal effects of COVID-19 and flu out to about six month post - hospitalization — but the researcher wanted to depend further , out to 18 months .
They looked at the rates of death , infirmary admission and intensive care social unit ( ICU ) admission fee among the study participants , as well as the rate of 94 specific wellness outcomes tie in to 10 organ system . For model , chest pain in the neck due to short profligate flow to the heart ( angina ) was related to thecardiovascular system , while abruptness of breather was related to therespiratory system of rules .
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The psychoanalysis revealed that the pace of demise , aesculapian care and poor health result were " eminent in both those admit to hospital for COVID-19 and those admitted to hospital for seasonal influenza , " the authors reported . But overall , the hazard were substantially higher for those hospitalise with COVID-19 .
For every 100 people , the COVID-19 grouping realize about eight to nine extra last within the postdate - up menses compared with the flu group . likewise , they receive about 20 more infirmary admissions and eight more ICU admission per 100 people , compare with the influenza group .
Both COVID-19 and flu come with a risk of various health problem , but COVID-19 affected far more organ systems . COVID-19 was linked to a risk of 64 of the 94 studied symptoms and wellness conditions , hit the cardiovascular , neurological and GI system , and more . Influenza was tied to just six : angina , firm heart rate ( tachycardia ) , eccentric 1 diabetes , cough , down descent oxygen and shortness of breath .
The latter three symptoms marry to flu are related to the respiratory scheme , and in fact , the flu carried a high peril of respiratory effects than COVID-19 through the entire follow - up catamenia . This highlights that " flu is more of a respiratory virus , but COVID is more of a multisystemic illness , " Al - Aly aver .
For all organ systems except GI , more than 50 % of the health effect take place more than one month after hospital discharge . This was true for both influenza and COVID-19 and spotlight the lasting impingement both infection can have in the post - acute form .
The Modern study has several limitations . A major one is that it focalize only on people hospitalized for either disease . " This is really a major restriction , that we studied it in this context , " so more body of work is need to realise how the long - term impacts of milder cases of influenza and COVID-19 compare to one another , Al - Aly said . In increase , the VA data were heavily skew toward honest-to-goodness manful patients , so there are stay on questions as to how these health core touch on people of other old age and sex .
With the data at hand , Al - Aly said he hopes the work raises both patient ' and wellness care provider ' cognizance of the lasting impacts of these diseases .
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