For three years, researchers tracked a group of 135,161 patients who had COVID-19 infections and compared their outcomes to 5,206,835 individuals who did not. All individuals were veterans tracked through the Department of Veterans Affairs database.
For individuals who were not hospitalized after a COVID-19 infection, the heightened risk of death went away after one year. But it remained among those who were hospitalized, and in addition, being hospitalized for a COVID-19 infection left patients at a higher risk for many other adverse events three years later.
“Our findings show reduction of risks over three years of follow-up but persistent increased risks of major adverse outcomes among hospitalized individuals…” the study authors wrote. “At three-year follow-up, there was no evidence in our cohort for new adverse outcomes that were not previously manifest.”
Lead study author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, director of the clinical epidemiology center for the VA St. Louis Health Care System, told Bloomberg the importance of the study challenges a normal way of thinking about the virus.
“We are used to thinking about infections as acute events with health effects that manifest around the time of infection,” Dr. Al-Aly told the news outlet. “The data shows that COVID can cause health effects even three years later.”
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