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MostCynical [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Sydney Morning Herald [smh.com.au] has a report from Reuters about some long-term effects in COVID survivors.

One in three COVID-19 survivors in a study of more than 230,000 mostly American patients were diagnosed with a brain or psychiatric disorder within six months, suggesting the pandemic could lead to a wave of mental and neurological problems, scientists said.

Researchers who conducted the analysis said it was not clear how the virus was linked to psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, but that these were the most common diagnoses among the 14 disorders they looked at.

The new findings, published in the Lancet Psychiatry [thelancet.com] journal, analysed health records of 236,379 COVID-19 patients, mostly from the United States, and found 34 per cent had been diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric illnesses within six months.

The Lancet article includes this disclaimer:

Big-data studies of this kind have intrinsic limitations, even when drawing on 81 million people, 236 379 of whom had COVID-19. In this pandemic context, not all individuals who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (particularly those with mild or asymptomatic illness) will be diagnosed, which could result in some contamination of the comparison groups.

The question: will severe, enduring, and less common conditions such as psychoses behave more like neurological disorders or common mental disorders? Among the COVID-19 cohort in this study, a first diagnosis of a psychotic disorder was substantially more common in patients hospitalised with COVID-19.

Lungs, hearts and brains..

Original Submission