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Patients with mild Covid-19 infections experience a significant and long-lasting reduction in their sense of taste and smell.
Patients with mild COVID-19 infections experience a significant and long-lasting reduction in their sense of taste and smell. The same goes for long-term shortness of breath, although it affects relatively few people. And women and the elderly are especially affected. This is demonstrated by the results of new research from Aarhus University Hospital and the West Jutland Regional Hospital (Denmark).
In the study, published in the scientific journal 'International Journal of Infectious Diseases', researchers compared symptoms daily for up to 90 days in 210 healthcare workers who had tested positive and 630 with a negative test.
"We saw that the prevalence of a longer-lasting reduction in the sense of taste and smell is significantly higher in patients with mild disease who did not require hospitalization. This pattern is also observed in the case of shortness of breath, but the number of number of people affected is much lower," says Henrik Kolstad, author of the study.
Thirty percent of those who tested positive and almost none of the participants who tested negative reported a reduced sense of taste and smell over the ninety days. At the beginning of the project, 30 percent of those who had tested positive reported difficulty breathing, a figure that dropped to 20 percent after thirty days, although not reaching the level of participants who had tested negative.
Cough, sore throat, headaches, muscle aches and fever were more common among those who tested positive than among those who tested negative in the first days, but after thirty days no increase was observed.
Women with a positive test reported more symptoms compared to women with a negative test than men with a positive test compared to men with a negative test. The same occurred with the oldest and youngest participants. According to the researcher, this could indicate that women and the elderly are more susceptible to developing COVID-19 symptoms in the long term.
"This study provides detailed knowledge of the symptom pathways that can be expected after testing positive for COVID-19 without requiring hospitalization," highlights Henrik Kolstad.
