Long COVID causes erectile dysfunction and hair loss
According to new research, hair loss and erectile dysfunction have joined the long list of long COVID symptoms.
The report states that the most common symptoms are loss of smell, shortness of breath, and chest pain, but there are also amnesia, erectile dysfunction, hallucinations, an inability to perform familiar movements or commands, bowel incontinence, and limb swelling.
Symptom patterns tended to be classified as respiratory symptoms, mental health and cognitive issues, and then a broader range of symptoms.
In addition to identifying a broader range of symptoms, researchers identified key groups and behaviors that put people at risk of developing long COVID
The study discovered that people who tested positive for the virus reported 62 symptoms much more frequently 12 weeks after initial infection than those who did not.
The NHS lists fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain or tightness, and “brain fog” as common Covid symptoms.
Researchers from the University of Birmingham worked with a team of clinicians and researchers from across England to analyze the anonymized electronic health records of 2.4 million people in the UK.
The records obtained between January 2020 and April 2021 included 486,149 people who had previously been infected and 1.9 million people who had no indication of coronavirus infection after matching for other clinical diagnoses.
The researchers were able to identify three distinct categories of symptoms using data from patients who had not been admitted to hospital.
Anuradhaa Subramanian, research fellow at the Institute of Applied Health Research at the University of Birmingham and lead author on the paper, said: “Our data analyses of risk factors are of particular interest because it helps us to consider what could potentially be causing or contributing to long COVID.”
She added: “Women are, for example, more likely to experience autoimmune diseases. Seeing the increased likelihood of women having long COVID in our study increases our interest in investigating whether autoimmunity or other causes may explain the increased risk in women.
“These observations will help to further narrow the focus on factors to investigate what may be causing these persistent symptoms after an infection, and how we can help patients who are experiencing them.”
The findings were published in Nature Medicine.
