geoffrey modest medical blogs

  The New York Times just published a very impressive article about long Covid, citing several studies suggesting theories about some physiologic disturbances as well as their remarkably high incidence (see   https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/well/move/long-covid-exercise.html?referringSource=articleShare   ).    Will review their article as well as several of the cited studies   Details: -- as mentioned in several prior blogs, long Covid or PASC (Post-Acute Sequelae of Covid-19) is remarkably common. A biostatistician at Indiana University School of Medicine (Dr. Natalie Lambert) collected self-reported data from more than 1 million long Covid patients through the Survivor Corps, a Facebook support group for Covid survivors -- one finding from this study, per Dr. Lambert, is that one of the most common symptoms is inability to exercise; patients get tired very easily and exercise seems to make it worse. Many clinicians have treated the inability to exerci...

  A new study assessed the one-year outcome of hospital survivors in China who had had Covid-19 (see  covid 1 yr outcome after hosp lancet2021 in dropbox , or  doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01755-4 )    Details:  -- 1276 Covid-19 survivors who were in the Jin-Yin-Tan hospital between January 7 and May 29, 2020, then followed at 6 months and 12 months (58% of the 2469 people discharged from the hospital completed the 6- and 12-month follow-up visits)  -- mean age 59, 53% men, never smoker 82%/current smoker 7%/former smoker 11% , hypertension 36%/diabetes 15%/coronary heart disease 8%  -- Covid-19 severity scale: hospitalization not requiring supplemental oxygen  (scale 3) in 25%; hospitalization requiring supplemental oxygen (scale 4) in 68%; hospitalization requiring high flow oxygen by nasal cannula or nasal cannula oxygen  non-invasive mechanical ventilation (scale 5) in 7%; hospitalization requiring ECMO or IMV (scal...

  -- The UK has an ongoing, updated tally of the prevalence of continuing symptoms following Covid-19 infection, the latest being 5Aug2021 and reflecting data for the four-week period ending 4 July 2021 (see    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/5august2021 /. major points:     --1.5% of the population (approx 945,000 people) has self-reported in a representative survey that they had "long covid", defined as symptoms persisting >4 weeks after the beginning of suspected covid infection          --mostly 25-34yo (132,000 people), 35-49 (253,000), 50-69 (361,000)     --835,000 (88%) had or suspected to have had covid at least 12 weeks previously (1.3% of population),  232,000 with symptoms 26-39 weeks  after infection and 380,000 (40%) at least one year later (0.6% of the populati...