Dr. Mubashar Choudry has stressed the need for further research on what happens beyond six months with the patients recovering from Covid-19.
He was talking to a panel discussion held on the topic that “one in three Covid-19 survivors suffering from neurological or psychiatric disorder within six months of infection with the virus”. “These are the real-world data from many patients. “They confirm the high rates of psychiatric diagnoses after Covid-19, and show that serious disorders affecting the nervous system (such as stroke and dementia) occur too. While the latter is much rarer, they are significant, especially in those who had severe Covid-19,” he said.
“Although the individual risks for most disorders are small, the effect across the whole population may be substantial for health and social care systems due to the scale of the pandemic and that many of these conditions are chronic. As a result, health care systems need to be resourced to deal with the anticipated need, both within primary and secondary care services.”
Dr. Mubashar Choudry said further research needs to be done to see “what happens beyond six months.
One in 3 Covid survivors has suffered a neurological or psychiatric disorder within six months of infection with the virus, an observational study of more than 230,000 patient health records has estimated.
The study, published Tuesday in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, analyzed data from the electronic health records of 236,379 Covid patients from the U.S.-based TriNetX network, which includes more than 81 million people.
This group was compared with 105,579 patients diagnosed with influenza and 236,038 patients diagnosed with any respiratory tract infection, including influenza.
Overall, the estimated incidence of being diagnosed with a neurological or mental health disorder following a Covid infection was 34%, the study led by researchers at the University of Oxford found when looking at 14 neurological and mental health disorders.
For 13% of these people, it was their first recorded neurological or psychiatric diagnosis.
The most common diagnoses after having the coronavirus were anxiety disorders (occurring in 17% of patients), mood disorders (14%), substance misuse disorders (7%), and insomnia (5%). The incidence of neurological outcomes was lower, including 0.6% for a brain hemorrhage, 2.1% for ischemic stroke, and 0.7% for dementia.
After taking into account underlying health characteristics, such as age, sex, ethnicity, and existing health conditions, there was overall a 44% greater risk of neurological and mental health diagnoses after Covid than after flu, and a 16% greater risk after Covid than with respiratory tract infections.
Since the coronavirus emerged in China in late 2019, over 132 million infections have been reported, including more than 2.8 million deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.