Lengthy Flu Is a Well being Threat, New Research Says

Statistically, there’s a superb likelihood you realize any individual who has skilled Lengthy COVID, the title for continual signs together with fatigue, mind fog, and ache following a case of COVID-19. About 14% of U.S. adults report having had Lengthy COVID in some unspecified time in the future, in keeping with federal information.

However many individuals don’t understand that different viruses, even quite common ones, can set off equally long-lasting and debilitating signs. A examine printed Dec. 14 in The Lancet Infectious Illnesses focuses on the chance of creating “Lengthy flu” after a extreme case of influenza.

“We realized from COVID-19 that infections which are initially thought to trigger solely acute diseases may cause continual illness,” says co-author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of analysis and improvement on the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Well being Care System and a scientific epidemiologist at Washington College in St. Louis. That is true of influenza as nicely, the brand new analysis exhibits.

Al-Aly and his colleagues used data from the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs to match the long-term well being outcomes of about 11,000 individuals hospitalized with influenza from 2015 to 2019 with these of about 81,000 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022. The researchers tracked how many individuals went on to develop any of 94 well being dangers related to the 2 viruses within the yr and a half after they had been hospitalized.

Relative to influenza survivors, individuals who’d had COVID-19 had been at elevated danger of 64 of the recognized issues, together with fatigue, mental-health issues, and pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and coronary heart situation. They had been additionally extra prone to die throughout the examine interval, consistent with different analysis evaluating the long-term outcomes of the 2 diseases.

Influenza survivors, in the meantime, had been at elevated danger of solely six well being issues, most of them associated to the respiratory and cardiovascular methods.

“COVID continues to be extra critical than the flu,” Al-Aly says, noting that it impacts quite a few organ methods whereas influenza is usually a respiratory sickness. However long-term well being issues had been widespread in each teams throughout the 18 months of follow-up. The researchers recorded about 615 well being points per 100 individuals within the COVID-19 group, in comparison with about 537 per 100 individuals within the influenza group. These numbers replicate the truth that some individuals expertise quite a few continual signs after an an infection, Al-Aly says.

It’s necessary to notice that the individuals included within the examine had been all hospitalized, which means they had been very sick throughout the acute phases of their diseases. The examine inhabitants was additionally overwhelmingly male and older, with a mean participant age of 70. Older adults are identified to be susceptible to the worst results of each COVID-19 and the flu. Subsequently, the outcomes might not translate to your complete inhabitants.

That mentioned, earlier analysis exhibits that even milder diseases can result in long-lasting well being points. Influenza, in addition to different widespread viruses like Epstein-Barr (which causes mononucleosis), have lengthy been thought to set off myalgic encephalomyelitis/continual fatigue syndrome, a post-infectious sickness that shares many signs with Lengthy COVID.

Newer analysis additionally underscores the potential results of even routine diseases. In a examine printed in October, researchers tracked individuals who had gotten sick with one in every of a wide range of respiratory illnesses, together with COVID-19, the flu, and the widespread chilly, and located that lingering signs popped up in every group. Equally, in a single 2022 examine of individuals with numerous respiratory illnesses, most of whom weren’t hospitalized, about half of individuals sick with one thing apart from COVID-19 reported ongoing points three months later. A 2021 examine taking a look at each hospitalized and non-hospitalized sufferers additionally discovered that about 40% of individuals with influenza skilled at the least one symptom generally related to Lengthy COVID within the six months after their diseases.

Taken collectively, Al-Aly says, these findings recommend that we have to begin pondering of viruses in another way. “Earlier than the pandemic, I trivialized infections. [I thought] you get sick for a day or two or three, and then you definately bounce again, and it’s throughout,” Al-Aly says. However as a rising variety of research present that’s not all the time the case, he has concluded that “infections deserve respect.”

Meaning doing no matter potential to keep away from catching and spreading them, he says, together with by sporting a masks in periods of heavy transmission, getting all really useful vaccines, and staying house if you really feel unwell.