A STUDY looking at the longer-term impact of Covid-19 has found a ‘significant proportion’ of patients discharged from hospitals in Oxfordshire reported symptoms of breathlessness, fatigue and depression for months.

Oxford University scientists found that two to three months after the onset of coronavirus, 64 per cent of patients continued to experience breathlessness and 55 per cent reported fatigue.

MRI scans revealed abnormalities in the lungs of 60 per cent of participants, in the hearts of 26 per cent, in the livers of 10 per cent and in the kidneys of 29 per cent of patients.

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The study took 58 patients with moderate to severe laboratory-confirmed Covid-19, who had been admitted for treatment at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the John Radcliffe, between March and May last year.

They also recruited 30 uninfected people from the community, group-matched for age, sex, body mass index and risk factors such as smoking, diabetes and hypertension.

The paper, published in the Lancet, is the first peer-reviewed paper to be published on the impact of Covid-19 on multiple organs using imaging.

Dr Betty Raman, who is leading the study, along with Professor Stefan Neubauer, said: “We have shown that a significant proportion of patients complained of symptoms of breathlessness and fatigue two to three months after the onset of the illness and that changes in the brain, lungs, heart, liver and kidneys could be seen on MRI in a proportion of patients.”

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