新研究：近半数新冠患者尚未完全康复
Nearly Half of Covid Patients Haven’t Fully Recovered Months Later, Study Finds
BENJAMIN MUELLER
2022年10月13日
笔记导读
home in on sth 把（思想、注意力）集中于 to direct your thoughts or attention towards sth ◆ I began to feel I was really homing in on the answer. 我开始觉得我快找到答案了。
constellation 星座；一群，一组(相似的事物)；A constellation of similar things is a group of them.
a constellation of something ◆ Most patients have a constellation of diseases, with few clear-cut distinctions between them…大多数患者的病症都很相似，鲜有明显的区别。
双语全文（官方翻译）
A study of tens of thousands of people in Scotland found that one in 20 people who had been sick with Covid reported not recovering at all, and another four in 10 said they had not fully recovered from their infections many months later.
苏格兰一项涵盖数万人的研究发现，每20名新冠患者中就有一人报告病情完全没有好转，另外还有40%的人表示，他们在感染多月之后仍未完全康复。
The authors of the study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications, tried to home in on the long-term risks of Covid by comparing the frequency of symptoms in people with and without previous Covid diagnoses.
这项研究于周三发表在《自然通讯》期刊，作者试图通过对比此前新冠确诊者和未确诊者的症状出现频率，了解新冠的长期风险。
People with previous symptomatic Covid infections reported certain persistent symptoms, such as breathlessness, palpitations and confusion or difficulty concentrating, at a rate roughly three times as high as uninfected people in surveys from six to 18 months later, the study found. Those patients also experienced elevated risks of more than 20 other symptoms relating to the heart, respiratory health, muscle aches, mental health and the sensory system.
研究发现，在六到18个月后的调查中，有症状感染者报告了某些持续的症状，如呼吸困难、心悸、意识混乱或难以集中注意力，占比大约是未感染者的三倍。这些患者还存在与心脏、呼吸健康、肌肉疼痛、精神健康和感官系统相关的20多种其他症状的风险升高。
The findings strengthened calls from scientists for more expansive care options for long Covid patients in the United States and elsewhere, while also offering some good news.
这些发现为科学家的呼吁提供了更有力的证据，以便为美国和其他国家的长期新冠患者提供更广泛的护理选择，同时也带来了一些好消息。
The study did not identify greater risks of long-term problems in people with asymptomatic coronavirus infections. It also found, in a much more limited subset of participants who had been given at least one dose of Covid vaccine before their infections, that vaccination appeared to help reduce if not eliminate the risk of some long Covid symptoms.
该研究并未发现无症状新冠感染者出现长期问题的风险更大。研究还发现，在更有限的一部分参与者中，他们在感染之前至少接种了一剂新冠疫苗，这似乎有助于减少——或者说是消除——长期新冠症状的部分风险。
People with severe initial Covid cases were at higher risk of long-term problems, the study found.
研究发现，症状严重的初期新冠病例出现长期问题的风险更高。
“The beauty of this study is they have a control group, and they can isolate the proportion of symptomatology that is attributable to Covid infection,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the research.
“这项研究的出色就在于，他们有一个对照组，可以分隔出归因于新冠感染的症状比例，”齐亚德·阿尔阿里博士说，他是美国退伍军人事务部圣路易斯卫生系统的研发主管，也是圣路易斯华盛顿大学的临床流行病学家。他并未参与这项研究。
“It also tracks with the broader idea that long Covid is truly a multisystem disorder,” Dr. Al-Aly said, one that resides “not only in the brain, not only in the heart — it’s all of the above.”
“它也呼应了一个更广泛的观点，即长期新冠确实属于多系统紊乱的疾病，”阿尔阿里说，这种疾病“不单影响大脑，不单影响心脏，而是会影响各个器官”。
Jill Pell, a professor of public health at the University of Glasgow who led the research, said the findings reinforced the importance of long Covid patients being offered support that extends beyond health care and also addresses needs related to jobs, education, poverty and disability.
领导这项研究的格拉斯哥大学公共卫生学教授吉尔·佩尔表示，研究结果再次表明了为长期新冠患者提供支持的重要性，支持的范围不仅限于医疗，还包括解决与就业、教育、贫困和残障相关的需求。
“It told us that Covid can appear differently in different individuals, and it can have more than one impact on your life,” Dr. Pell said. “Any approach to supporting people has to be, firstly, personalized and also holistic. The answer doesn’t just lie within the health care sector.”
“它告诉我们，新冠会在不同的人身上表现出不同的症状，会对人的生活产生不止一种影响，”佩尔说。“任何造福于人的办法首先都必须是个性化的，同时还要面面俱到。答案并不仅仅在于医疗保健部门。”
Long Covid refers to a constellation of problems that can plague patients for months or longer after a infection. Over the last year, researchers have given more attention to understanding the daunting aftereffects as the number of Covid cases exploded and health systems learned to better manage the initial stages of an infection.
长期新冠指的是在感染后困扰患者数月或更长时间的一系列问题。去年，随着新冠感染者激增以及卫生系统懂得了如何更好地处理感染初期阶段的治疗，研究人员开始更多关注和了解令人恐惧的后遗症。
U.S. government estimates have indicated that between 7.7 million and 23 million people in the United States could have long Covid.
美国政府估计，美国的长期新冠患者数约在770万到2300万人之间。
Globally, “the condition is devastating people’s lives and livelihoods,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, wrote in an article on Wednesday for The Guardian. He called on all countries to devote “immediate and sustained action equivalent to its scale.”
在全球范围内，“这种情况严重影响了人们的生活和生计，”世界卫生组织总干事谭德塞周三在《卫报》的一篇文章中写道。他呼吁所有国家“立即拿出相应的持续性措施”。
The authors of the study in Scotland tracked 33,000 people who had tested positive for the virus starting in April 2020 and 63,000 who had never been diagnosed with Covid. In six-month intervals, those people were asked about any symptoms they had, including tiredness, muscle aches, chest pain and neurological problems, and about any difficulties with daily life.
苏格兰这项研究的作者从2020年4月开始跟踪了3.3万名新冠阳性者，外加6.3万名从未被诊断出新冠的人。每隔六个月，这些人就会被问及他们的症状，包括疲劳、肌肉疼痛、胸痛和神经问题，以及日常生活中遇到的任何困难。
By comparing the frequency of those problems with infected and uninfected people, the researchers tried to overcome a challenge that many other long Covid researchers have confronted: how to ascribe less specific symptoms to Covid when those problems are also common in the general population and may be prevalent in the midst of a pandemic.
通过比较感染者和未感染者出现这些问题的频率，研究人员试图解答许多其他长期新冠研究者遇到过的难题：当这些健康问题在普通人群中也很常见，并且可能在疫情中流行时，要如何将不那么具体的症状归因于新冠。
Several of the most common long Covid symptoms identified in the study were also reported by one-fifth to one-third of participants who had never been infected, the study found. But symptoms were significantly more common in people who had previously had Covid: Those participants were more likely to report 24 of the 26 symptoms tracked by the study.
研究发现，在从未感染过新冠的参与者中，有五分之一到三分之一的人也报告了研究中总结的几种最常见的长期新冠症状。但这些症状在感染过新冠的人身上明显更常见：在该研究跟踪的26种症状中，这些参与者更有可能报告其中的24种。
Of those with previous Covid cases, 6 percent said on their most recent follow-up survey that they had not recovered at all and 42 percent said that they had only partly recovered.
在曾经的新冠感染者中，6%的人在最近一次随访调查时表示，他们根本没有恢复；而42%的人表示他们没有完全恢复。
Dr. Pell said that she was still studying the trajectory of long Covid symptoms over the months and years since an infection. But the new study opened a small window onto that question. In one group of previously infected patients, about 13 percent of people said that their symptoms had improved over time, while about 11 percent said they had deteriorated.
佩尔说她仍在研究感染后数月乃至数年的长期新冠症状的发展轨迹。但这项新研究为这一问题打开了一个小的突破口。在一组曾经的新冠感染者中，约有13%的人表示，随着时间推移，他们的症状有所改善，还有约11%的人表示他们的症状恶化了。
“Some do resolve over time,” Dr. Al-Aly said, “but also there’s a good number of people who remain symptomatic with a bunch of manifestations over longer time periods.”
“有些（症状）确实会逐渐消退，”佩尔说，“但也有很多人在很长时间里仍受各种症状困扰。”
Only a small portion of the study participants — about 4 percent — had been vaccinated before their infections, and many of those with only a single dose.
只有一小部分研究参与者——约为4%——在感染前接种过疫苗，还有许多人只接种了一剂。
“We’re now really heavily reliant upon vaccination,” Dr. Pell said, “which does confer some protection, but it’s not absolute.”
“我们现在非常依赖疫苗接种，”佩尔说，“这的确能提供一些保护，但也不是绝对的。”
Women, older people and those living in poorer areas also faced more serious aftereffects from an infection. So, too, did those with pre-existing health problems, including respiratory disease and depression.
妇女、老年人和生活在贫困地区的人也都面临感染带来的更严重的后果。而对感染前就存在健康问题——包括呼吸系统疾病和抑郁症——的人也是如此。
About nine out of 10 study participants were white, making it more difficult to determine how and why long Covid risks may have differed among racial and ethnic groups.
十分之九的研究参与者是白人，这使得确定不同种族和族裔之间的长期新冠风险如何不同以及为何不同变得相对困难。
For health systems still working to recover from recent Covid surges while facing an onslaught of patients with the flu and other respiratory illnesses, considerably more resources were needed to treat patients suffering from an earlier coronavirus infection, scientists said.
科学家们表示，在最近的新冠感染激增后，各国卫生系统都还在努力恢复运转，同时又面临流感和其他呼吸道疾病患者的冲击，而治疗受早期新冠感染影响的患者所需要的资源要多出许多。
“Our systems are not prepared,” Dr. Al-Aly said.
“我们的系统并没有做好准备，”佩尔说。
