geoffrey modest medical blogs

  A new huge VA study found a large array of persistent symptoms in veterans after nonhospitalized Covid-19 infection (see   covid   long covid VA study nature2021  in dropbox, or doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03553-9 )    Details:       -- 73,435 people in the VA system who survived at least 30 days after Covid-19 diagnosis and were not hospitalized were compared to 4,990,835 nonhospitalized veterans who did not have covid, from 1March 2020 to 31December 2020  -- covariates assessed included age, race, sex, receipt of long-term care, number of patient encounters, number of hospitalizations, number of outpatient prescriptions, and number of outpatient eGFR measurements in the year before enrollment. They also included the Area Deprivation Index at the residency address of the patients as a surrogate measure for socio-economic issues  --median followup 126 days    Results:  -- non-hospitalized controls had no increase in symptoms: HR 1.03 (0.94-1.12) for all HRs and 1.03 (0.95-1.12) for ne

  A preprint, pre-peer reviewed study was done in the UK finding important changes in brain scans after Covid-19 infections, even after mild ones (see  ​ ​ covid brain mri changes medrix2021   in dropbox, or  doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690  )     Details:   -- over 40,000 volunteers had MRI scans done prior to the Covid pandemic, stored in the UK Biobank  -- mean age 60, 43% male, 97% white, blood pressure 115/80, BMI 26  -- researchers reviewed 782 scans of people who had prior MRIs in the Biobank and second scans done on average 37 months after the initial ones:     -- 394 people with 2 scans later tested positive for Covid, and these people were matched for age, sex, ethnicity, and interval between the scans with people who did not have Covid -- 15 of these Covid patients had been hospitalized (2 in the critical care unit, 3 with ventilatory support), 379 had non-hospitalizable infections  -- the study compared the 1st and 2nd scans of individuals who did vs did not have sympto