After long COVID, 'long flu' can be possible too, finds study

Long COVID has been a matter of grave concern, known to impact 1 in 4 COVID patients. While there's still a lot that remains unknown about what exactly causes long COVID, studies have found that post-infection symptoms could also strike those who contract a case of the flu, and get long flu.

Also read: When is it the best time to get a flu vaccine shot? Who needs a vaccine first?

While COVID-19 has brought on a lot of health implications and made us face the dangers of a lingering viral infection, it has now been revealed that long flu, too, can be a big cause of concern, and battling influenza strains can leave similar effects on the body.

The instances of long flu and prolonged respiratory symptoms have come to light after a study led by the Oxford University, published in the medical journal, PLOS Medicine analyzed health problems and vital stats of over 1,00,000 people from two groups based out of the USA.

While the candidate pool did include patients who had also contracted COVID before, it was observed that while 42% of people sought symptoms for their COVID-related symptoms, nearly 30% of people, who had a case of the flu suffered from prolonged symptoms, implying that both the viruses- SARS-COV-2 and influenza viruses have capabilities of causing long-term side-effects.

While flu is a milder respiratory illness in comparison to COVID, what we definitely do know is that every individual takes a different timeline to recover, i.e., while some tend to recover faster, within a week, some could have a longer symptomatic period and recover after a while, and make them vulnerable to post-viral malaise. As per experts, long flu, much like long COVID can strike anyone who has a longer recovery period than the general two-week time, which is taken to be the time most healthy individuals tend to feel better, and the viral load decreases.

The incidental rate of long COVID may also be more common amongst those who have debilitating symptoms, or suffer from a severe condition.

Both long COVID, and long flu are concerning health issues which do not just require attention, but can plague vital health. While it has now been long known about the consequences and causative effects of long COVID, or post-COVID syndrome, debilitating and prolonged symptoms of the flu can also be somehow similar.

For example, anecdotal evidence has revealed that both long COVID and long flu-like symptoms cause considerably similar symptoms, including anxiety, breathlessness, brain fog, persistent cough or fever, fatigue and muscle pains. However, more persistent symptoms have so far been largely linked to a COVID infection history.

Apart from that, while there's a certain link to severity, researchers are still looking to find if there is an apparent link between severity in flu infections, and the prolonged occurrence of symptoms.

Even though now there's a lot of new evidence to suggest as to why long flu can be just as terrible as long COVID, some also feel that the post-infection symptoms have been ignored for a while, and there's a dire need to take this seriously.

It is also believed that while respiratory illnesses' severity has only been given much more importance in the COVID-19 times, long-term repercussions of the flu and the apparent severity may have been long ignored, or treated lightly and hence, even if people did suffer from long flu before, it wasn't treated seriously. More so, despite being just as threatening as COVID, flu doesn't really garner that level of attention as COVID does.

Even as researchers continue to evaluate the effects of long COVID and long flu, suffering from chronic, long-persisting symptoms could also imply that any individual who does catch a serious case of the flu, will also have a longer recovery time since the symptoms can potentially play out for long.

Going through symptoms of long flu, or post-viral malaise, which can be an extension of flu infection symptoms only can also be a reason why flu cases could take a longer while to recover, or have been seen to linger for long right now. While flu is a mild form of disease, suffering from long flu can make some continue to experience difficult symptoms for a foreseeable while.