Direct.Latest news about the coronavirus
Health: Delusions, the new symptom predicted by Covid-19, especially in older people
The ravages of the coronavirus seem to go beyond physical ailments.
A
new study from the University of Oxford
has shown that practically one in five people who have suffered from the disease is diagnosed, within a maximum period of three months, with some type of psychiatric disorder that they had not always suffered before.
The
depression, anxiety or insomnia
could eventually occur, researchers, thus worsening physical condition as p
or the necessary medications to defeat Covid-19. In addition, according to this
study
developed in collaboration with the Oxford Center for Biomedical Research (NIHR), people who had already had
previously psychiatric disorders would be 65% more prone
to contract the disease.
A parameter that, as pointed out from one of the world's leading centers and research on the coronavirus, is
independent of other determining factors
such as age, gender, race or the existence of previous pathologies. "These are unexpected results that need to be investigated further. Meanwhile, the fact of having suffered previous psychiatric disorders should be added to the
list of risk factors for Covid-19
"says Dr. Max Taquet, a member of the NIHR and one of the researchers of a study that has been prepared from 70 million medical records stored in the United States. Among them, 62,000 cases of Covid-19 so mild that they did not need hospital care.
New persistent symptoms of Covid-19
In fact, it seems that those who have already suffered them run the risk of worsening their diagnoses and even developing new pathologies, some of the most common being
dementia, adjustment disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder
.
"People are concerned that Covid-19 survivors have a
increased risk of mental illness
, and our large-scale study shows that this is quite likely.
Our social services have to be ready to provide the necessary care, especially if we take into account that
these results we have obtained are surely inferior to reality
.
We must continue investigating urgently to find new treatments for this problem, "says Paul Harrison, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and another of the study's authors, a report that also highlights that the percentage of people who receive a first diagnosis of mental disorder
between 14 and 90 days after receiving the Covid-19 is 5.8%
.
Practically twice that of other groups of diseases such as those who suffer a fracture (2.5%), kidney stones (3.2%) or the flu (2.8%).
For comparison, those who had suffered before a previous psychiatric disorder developed it again in 18% when they were diagnosed with Covid, 13% when they suffered the flu and 12.7% when they broke a bone.
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