Dr. Allison P. Navis, a specialist in neurodegenerative diseases at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York who was not involved in the study, said about 75 percent of her 200 patients after Covid had problems such as depression, anxiety ‘, irritability or mood symptoms. ”
Study participants were overwhelmingly white and 70 percent were women. Dr. Navis and others have said that the lack of diversity probably reflects the demographics of people who are able to seek care relatively early, rather than the full spectrum of people affected by post-Covid neurological symptoms.
“Especially in New York City, most patients who are sick with Covid are people of color and Medicaid patients, and these are absolutely not the patients one sees in the post-Covid center,” said Dr. ‘The majority of patients are white, they often have private insurance, and I think we still need to find out a little bit about what the inequalities are – whether it’s simply a lack of access or as symptoms in people. of color or if it is something else. ”
In the North West study, dr. Koralnik said that because coronavirus testing was difficult to obtain early in the pandemic, only half of the participants tested positive for the coronavirus, but that all had the initial physical symptoms of Covid-19. The study found very little difference between those who tested positive and those who did not. Dr. Koralnik said that those who tested negative tended to contact the clinic about a month later in the course of the disease than those who tested positive, possibly because some weeks were evaluated or trying to solve their problems by others. to address doctors.
Me. Khan was among the participants who had a negative test for the virus, but she said she later tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, a proof that she was infected.
Another study participant, Eddie Palacios, 50, a commercial real estate agent living in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, tested positive for the coronavirus in the fall and experienced only headaches and loss of taste and smell. . But a month later, things changed, ‘he said.