Common long Covid symptoms eventually disappear after three years, study shows

09 November 2023 , 23:10

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A study has found that two long Covid symptoms appear to go after three years (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

People suffering from two common long Covid symptoms have been told that they appear to go after three years, new research shows.

There’s good news for those who lost taste and smell after having had mild Covid as the side effects largely appear to resolve themselves. This has been found to be the case in a study in Italy of Covid patients who picked up the infection in March and April, 2020.

Many people have described how their taste and smell has been affected since having had Covid but this does not now seem to be irreversible. There were 88 people, with an average age of 49, who took part in the Italian study and they all had mild Covid symptoms that included a loss of taste and smell. And mild Covid was defined as where there was no lower respiratory disease.

The research found that the rates of smell and taste were roughly the same for the 88 patients who had Covid after three years as it was for the same number of people who never had the virus.

"In the vast majority of cases, the loss of the sense of smell is not irreversible," said Paolo Boscolo-Rizzo, a University of Trieste professor, and a co-author of the study, published in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery.

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The report said for smell: "At the three-year study end point, olfactory dysfunction was comparable between both groups." And as for taste the findings were similar with “no significant differences” between those who had and didn’t have Covid.

Broken down further for the 88 people who had Covid, two-thirds said they had lost their sense of smell or taste when they had the virus, that dropped to 32 per cent who still were without it a year later. After two years of infection there were 20.5 per cent, while finally 16 per cent still had their smell or taste affected three years later - the same level roughly as for those who never had Covid.

It comes as people are being warned of a newly detected strain of Covid which is feared to be “more transmissible” as it continues to spread through several countries. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says the new JN.1 strain of the virus has already been found in the UK, as well as the US, Iceland, Portugal and Spain.

Experts say it is also spreading rapidly through France and they are still discovering more about JN.1 but fear the latest variant could become a serious health issue. According to Amesh Adalja, from the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, JN.1 is a descendant of BA.2.86 - better known as the Pirola variant, which came from Omicron.

Tim Hanlon