What is ‘long flu’, a disease that doctors are trying to understand – 10/06/2023 – Balance and Health
[ad_1]
“Long flu” may be something similar to long Covid, with some people experiencing long symptoms after an initial infection, a UK study has found.
Common symptoms of prolonged flu include coughing, stomach pain and diarrhea.
These findings come from 10,171 adults who completed questionnaires on the topic.
More work still needs to be done to understand who is at risk, how serious it might be and what can be done about it, experts say.
The idea that a respiratory virus — or even other viral infections — could cause longer-lasting illnesses is not new, but the recent Covid pandemic has brought new attention to the phenomenon.
The researchers behind the new work say the results provide validation for patients facing issues like this. Researcher Adrian Martineau, from Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC: “People can actually feel very depressed after a virus.”
The study, published in The Lancet’s eClinical Medicine journal, asked people to report any respiratory illness and other symptoms they had in the first two months of 2021 — as the Covid pandemic entered its second year and vaccines were beginning to be rolled out. .
No participant in this study had yet received any dose of vaccine against Covid-19.
Of the 10,171 people interviewed in the study:
- 1,343 said they had recently caught Covid-19
- 472 said they had been infected with another respiratory virus, such as flu or a cold
Not everyone who recovers from an illness has new or persistent symptoms.
But compared with those who said they hadn’t had any recent respiratory illness, those who said they had Covid, flu or a cold in the previous weeks were more likely to experience certain symptoms over the next month or more.
These symptoms include:
- diarrhea
- stomach problems
- muscle or joint pain
- sleep problems
- memory problems/difficulty concentrating
- dizziness/feeling of vertigo
- cough
People who had recently had Covid were more likely to report problems with smell and taste, mental confusion, dizziness and sweating than people who had prolonged symptoms after a cold or flu.
Post-viral fatigue or other symptoms can affect people of any age. And the severity of the initial illness does not always predict this risk — some people may be very unwell at first but recover relatively quickly, while others who were only mildly ill at first may continue to have debilitating symptoms long afterward.
“Our findings illuminate not only the impact of long Covid on people’s lives, but also other respiratory infections. Lack of knowledge, or even the lack of a common term, impedes both the reporting and diagnosis of these conditions,” said the researcher Giulia Vivaldi, from Queen Mary University in London.
“As the investigation into long Covid continues, we need to take the opportunity to investigate and consider the lasting effects of other acute respiratory infections.”
“These ‘long’ infections are very difficult to diagnose and treat, mainly due to the lack of diagnostic tests and the existence of so many possible symptoms. More than 200 have been investigated for long Covid alone.”
According to data collected by the Office for National Statistics, around 1.9 million people in the UK — around 3% of the population — suffered from long Covid this spring. It’s difficult to know for sure how many people are affected.
Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College in London, said the study was important in showing that recovery from an acute respiratory infection can be slow, regardless of the cause. “People should expect a slow return to normality and not expect an immediate return to full activity.”
And he warned that the term “long flu” should not belittle the very significant disability that some people have as a result specifically of long Covid.
Paul Harrison, professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, said: “The study supports previous findings that long-term symptoms are common after respiratory infections in general, not just after Covid.”
[ad_2]
Source link
