Long Covid can have a worse effect on patients than some types of cancer according to a new study.
The researchers, who sought to examine the impact long Covid has on daily quality of life, assessed than 3,750 patients who had been referred to a long Covid clinic and were using a digital app as part of their treatment.
Patients were then tasked with completing questionnaires detailing the disease’s effect on them, including their quality of life, anxiety, depression fatigue levels and more.
The researchers, who were predominantly from University College London (UCL) and the University of Exeter, found that patients’ fatigue was comparable, if not worse, than those with cancer-related anaemia or severe kidney disease.
The findings also indicated that long Covid led to lower quality of life scores than patients with advanced cancer, with some people also reporting that that the disease had affected their daily activities so much it was worse than stroke patients and on par with those suffering from Parkinson’s.
The impact of long Covid is still yet to be fully understood with this undertaking the first to evaluate how patients under specialist treatment in England had been affected in regards to their daily life, according to UCL’s Dr Henry Goodfellow, who was also the study’s co-lead.
“Our results have found that long Covid can have a devastating effect on the lives of patients – with fatigue having the biggest impact on everything from social activities to work, chores and maintaining close relationships,” said Dr Goodfellow.
Along with its deleterious physiological effects, the researchers found that long Covid had economic and social consequences too.
With more than 90% of the patients being between 18 and 65 in the study, just over half (51%) said they had been unable to work for at least a day in the last month – 20% reported not being able to work at all.
Dr Goodfellow hopes his team’s findings help policymakers adapt existing services and develop new ones more aligned with the needs of long Covid patients.
The study, which can be found here, was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research with partners from the University of Southampton, Barts Health NHS Trust, UCL Hospitals NHS Trust and the Royal Free Hospital also participating in the research.
