covid-1

The Most Common Long COVID Symptoms Doctors Are Seeing Right Now

There’s a lot the medical community is still sorting out about long COVID, so it’s understandable to have questions if you develop new symptoms without an obvious cause. Could you have long COVID or something else entirely?
It’s important to point out that the answer isn’t always obvious and that long COVID is a diagnosis of exclusion. Meaning, people are typically diagnosed with long COVID after other potential illnesses have been ruled out. But knowing the most common long COVID symptoms can at least give you a clue as to whether post-COVID conditions could be responsible for your currently health issue.
The study analyzed data from 154,068 people in the Veterans Health Administration system who had COVID-19 and compared it to about 5.6 million people with similar characteristics who did not have the virus. The researchers discovered that people who had COVID-19 were 36% more likely to develop long-term gastrointestinal issues they didn’t have before they got the virus. More than 9,600 of those patients who had COVID-19 developed issues with their digestion, intestines, pancreas, or liver.
Of those, the most common issues were gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and peptic ulcer disease, but some experienced GI symptoms like constipation, stomach pain, and diarrhea. “Our results show that people with SARS-CoV-2 infection are at increased risk of gastrointestinal disorders in the post-acute phase of COVID-19,” the researchers wrote. “Post-COVID care should involve attention to gastrointestinal health and disease.”

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