Statistically, there’s a very good probability you already know someone who has skilled Long COVID, the title for power signs together with fatigue, mind fog, and ache following a case of COVID-19. About 14% of U.S. adults report having had Long COVID in some unspecified time in the future, according to federal data.

But many individuals don’t notice that different viruses, even quite common ones, can trigger similarly long-lasting and debilitating signs. A study printed Dec. 14 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases focuses on the danger of growing “Long flu” after a extreme case of influenza.

“We learned from COVID-19 that infections that are initially thought to cause only acute illnesses can cause chronic disease,” says co-author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of analysis and improvement on the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System and a scientific epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. That’s true of influenza as effectively, the brand new analysis exhibits.

Al-Aly and his colleagues used data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to check the long-term well being outcomes of about 11,000 folks hospitalized with influenza from 2015 to 2019 with these of about 81,000 folks hospitalized with COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022. The researchers tracked how many individuals went on to develop any of 94 well being dangers related to the 2 viruses within the yr and a half after they had been hospitalized.

Relative to influenza survivors, individuals who’d had COVID-19 had been at elevated threat of 64 of the recognized issues, together with fatigue, mental-health issues, and pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and coronary heart concern. They had been additionally extra prone to die through the research interval, consistent with other research comparing the long-term outcomes of the 2 diseases.

Influenza survivors, in the meantime, had been at elevated threat of solely six well being issues, most of them associated to the respiratory and cardiovascular techniques.

“COVID is still more serious than the flu,” Al-Aly says, noting that it impacts quite a few organ techniques whereas influenza is generally a respiratory sickness. But long-term well being issues had been widespread in each teams through the 18 months of follow-up. The researchers recorded about 615 well being points per 100 folks within the COVID-19 group, in comparison with about 537 per 100 folks within the influenza group. Those numbers replicate the truth that some folks expertise quite a few power signs after an an infection, Al-Aly says.

It’s vital to notice that the folks included within the research had been all hospitalized, which means they had been very sick through the acute phases of their diseases. The research inhabitants was additionally overwhelmingly male and older, with a median participant age of 70. Older adults are identified to be susceptible to the worst results of each COVID-19 and the flu. Therefore, the outcomes might not translate to your entire inhabitants.

That mentioned, earlier analysis exhibits that even milder diseases can result in long-lasting well being points. Influenza, in addition to different widespread viruses like Epstein-Barr (which causes mononucleosis), have lengthy been thought to set off myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a post-infectious sickness that shares many signs with Long COVID.

Newer analysis additionally underscores the potential results of even routine diseases. In a study published in October, researchers tracked individuals who had gotten sick with one among quite a lot of respiratory ailments, together with COVID-19, the flu, and the widespread chilly, and located that lingering signs popped up in every group. Similarly, in one 2022 study of individuals with varied respiratory ailments, most of whom weren’t hospitalized, about half of individuals sick with one thing aside from COVID-19 reported ongoing points three months later. A 2021 study each hospitalized and non-hospitalized sufferers additionally discovered that about 40% of individuals with influenza skilled at the very least one symptom generally related to Long COVID within the six months after their diseases.

Taken collectively, Al-Aly says, these findings counsel that we have to begin considering of viruses in another way. “Before the pandemic, I trivialized infections. [I thought] you get sick for a day or two or three, and then you bounce back, and it’s all over,” Al-Aly says. But as a rising variety of research present that’s not at all times the case, he has concluded that “infections deserve respect.”

That means doing no matter doable to avoid catching and spreading them, he says, together with by carrying a masks during times of heavy transmission, getting all recommended vaccines, and staying residence while you really feel unwell.