One-Third of COVID-19 Survivors May Develop a Neuropsychiatric Disorder Within Months of Infection

One-third of individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 developed a psychiatric or neurological problem within six months of their diagnosis, according to astudy published Tuesday inThe Lancet Psychiatry. The prevalence of a post-COVID neurologic or psychiatric diagnosis was even greater among individuals with severe illness who had required hospitalization.“Given the size of the pandemic and the chronicity of many of the diagnoses and their consequences (for example, dementia, stroke, and intracranial hemorrhage), substantial effects on health and social care systems are likely to occur,” wrote Maxime Taque, Ph.D., of the University of Oxford and colleagues. “Our data provide important evidence indicating the scale and nature of services that might be required.”Taque and colleagues used data from a multinational electronic health record (EHR) database to identify 236,379 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 on or after January 20, 2020, and who were still alive on December 13, 2020. This sample included 190,077 patients who did not require hospitalization and 46,302 who did (including 8,945 patients who required intensive care). For control groups, Taque and colleagues also examined the EHR records of patients diagnosed with influenza and patients diagnosed with any respiratory tract infection during the same period.The researchers then investigated the occurrence of the following neuropsychiatric outcomes in the first 180 days after COVID-19 diagnosis: intracranial hemorrhage;...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: anxiety COVID-19 electronic health records hospitalizations mood disorders neuropsychiatric disorders The Lancet Psychiatry Source Type: research