A study that appears to suggest Covid is more disabling than cancer has been labeled “irresponsible.”
Like many articles before it, the research was published this week in Naturopathy found that long Covid-19 increases the risk of heart problems, blood clots, diabetes, memory problems, fatigue and mental health problems.
The academics behind the study then calculated the number of days Covid patients lived with debilitating symptoms and compared that to the number of days people had symptoms of cancer and heart disease on average.
They concluded that Covid has long caused a “greater burden of disability” than either of these two chronic conditions.
But a doctor not involved in the study told DailyMail.com that the claim was “irresponsible” because the study had several major flaws that could have skewed the results.
They added that this could lead to an overreaction to longstanding Covid-19 and a diminishing focus on the conditions affecting tens of millions of Americans.
Lung Covid is a condition that encompasses a wide variety of symptoms such as shortness of breath, brain fog, fatigue, and depression that persist for weeks or even years after you recover from the virus.
Dr. Stuart Fischer, a physician of internal medicine in New York, told DailyMail.com that there are conditions in Americans that are more deadly, more disabling, and a higher health and financial burden for both patients and the health care system.
He said: “The whole spectrum of long Covid information ranges from unknown to irresponsible to many sources,” he added.
“Instead of focusing on long Covid, people should be concerned about obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.
“These are diseases that affect a quarter of the population or more.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in thirteen American adults has long been affected by Covid, the equivalent of more than 16.5 million.
The CDC’s estimates have been heavily disputed by many experts, who say that the symptoms are often so common that they could be due to other more common conditions.
Lung Covid is a condition that encompasses a wide variety of symptoms, such as shortness of breath, brain fog, fatigue, and depression, that persist for weeks or even years after you recover from the virus.
The study in question was conducted this week by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and published Monday.
They analyzed the medical records of 140,000 veterans who survived for 30 days after testing positive for Covid in 2020 and later developing long-term Covid symptoms.
Researchers then compared their health to six million other veterans who were not infected with Covid.
The participants were followed for two years.
Researchers determined the risk of developing at least one of the 80 complications associated with a long Covid-19 period, such as fatigue or difficulty breathing.
They then added up the risks using a measure called a disability-adjusted life year (DALY). Each DALY represents one year of disability.
The study found that long-term Covid conditions caused 80 years of disability in 1,000 veterans.
Heart disease and cancer, by comparison, result in 52 and 50 years per 1,000, respectively, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease Study.
The researchers wrote that these findings could help address the long-term care needs of long-term Covid patients.
Long Covid complications were added up into a measure medical professionals call a “disability-adjusted life year” (DALY). Each DALY represents one year of living with a disability. The study found that long-time Covid generated more than 80 DALYs among every 1,000 veterans
Covid cases are on the rise in the US, driven by new variants Eris and BA.2.86
The team wrote in the study that their findings “call for attention to the health care needs of people with long-term health effects due to” Covid.
But Dr. Fischer said Comparing long Covid to a condition like cancer is irresponsible because cancer is not just one disease.
Skin cancer and lung cancer are not the same disease. One of them is small and may require a visit to the dermatologist, and lung cancer can be instantly fatal, so the term ‘cancer’ is very, very vague,” he said.
The threat of cancer is also much better studied and estimated.
In addition, the study looked only at veterans, a population already prone to a host of physical and mental health problems, including alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
This is possible both suppress the immune system, making people with the conditions more likely to get Covid-19 or autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, which can mimic long-term Covid symptoms.
The study also did not include a diverse population in terms of age, gender, or race.
According to data from the VA, the most common age range for veterans is 60 to 64 years old. About 90 percent of veterans are male and more than 70 percent are white.
This means that the study represents only a limited subset of the overall US population, and the results may not apply to the general US population.
“This is not the ideal study group,” Dr. Fischer said.
In addition, the study only looked at Covid cases in 2020, when infections were more severe due to the lack of vaccines and therapies. The cases studied also occurred before new species came into circulation.
Now, Covid has mutated multiple times, most recently to the Eris and BA.2.86 strains, and the infections are different and often milder than the original strain.
“That was the original virus,” Dr. Fischer said. “This distorts the results.”
There is still debate about the true extent and severity of a long-lasting Covid-19, and several studies have shown that people who develop the condition would have suffered from these symptoms regardless of Covid infection.
The number of long-term Covid patients is murky, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates it one in thirteen American adultsor 7.5 percent, have had Covid for a long time, defined as symptoms lasting three or more months after first contracting the virus.
The risk of being diagnosed with long-term Covid also increases with each subsequent infection, a study from the University of Nebraska.
In some cases, the condition was fatal. The CDC reported late last year that in the first two and a half years of the pandemic, more than 3,500 Americans had died from a long-term Covid-related condition. These conditions include Covid itself, heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Thirty percent of the documented deaths occurred in adults ages 75 to 84.