High psychological pressure and poor mood are prone to illness, which seems to be common sense for most people. However, the "sickness" mentioned here is probably some chronic diseases, such as heart disease, hypertension, and even tumors.
So, what does it have to do with the excessive psychological pressure of and the new coronavirus that is rampant around the world today? Going further, will your heart be more likely to suffer from COVID-19 or your symptoms are more severe after being "infected"? On September 7, a study published by Harvard Medical School in the top psychiatry journal JAMA PSYCHIATRY (IF=25.91) confirmed this view.
Before introducing this study, it is necessary to explain a concept - Postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, which refers to a group of syndromes that last longer than 14 weeks after 's dyspnea, loss of smell and taste, confusion in thinking ("brain fog"), fatigue and depression . Earlier meta analysis of showed that more than half of (54%-73%) hindrances of had such symptoms.
The sequelae of the acute phase of COVID-19 has had a great impact on patients' quality of life and happiness. However, the current research on this phenomenon is still small and shallow, and there is a lack of persuasive and representative clinical evidence. Few scholars have learned about psychological factors including anxiety, depression, loneliness, psychological stress, etc., on the occurrence and development of the sequelae of acute stage of COVID-19, and the outcome of to .
Therefore, the author team of this article, researchers from Harvard Medical School's School of Public Health, conducted a large-scale study: , from February 2020 to November 2021, they conducted research in more than 100,000 nurses and their children, and finally included 3,200 individuals confirmed to have been infected with the new coronavirus as a study sample. researchers want to know whether anxiety, depression, worry, loneliness and psychological stress before getting infected with the new coronavirus increase the risk of sequelae among COVID-19 survivors? The results of the
study confirm the researchers' conjecture: among the 3,200 individuals with a history of infection, more than 40% of (43.9%) had sequelae, and the vast majority (38.7%) lasted for more than 2 months . Whether it is anxiety, depression, worry, loneliness or psychological stress before infection, significantly increases the risk of sequelae (risk ratios are 1.32, 1.42, 1.37, 1.46, 1.32, respectively); and individuals with more than 2 of the above psychological phenomena have a higher risk of sequelae after infection (risk ratio is 1.49).
Therefore, although the acute sequelae of the new coronavirus pneumonia cannot be arbitrarily defined as a physical and mental illness, at least we have reason to speculate that a bad mental state may indeed increase the risk of sequelae after suffering from the new coronavirus pneumonia. So what is the mechanism behind this? As an epidemiological study, this article cannot give the exact pathophysiology or psychopathological causes, but the author suggests that psychological stress may be related to chronic systemic inflammation, leading to the continuous generation of pro-inflammatory factors and oxygen free radicals in the body. These substances will not only damage the respiratory system, but also have an adverse impact on nervous system , digestive system, etc.; at the same time, chronic stress will also lead to imbalance in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis function, leading to immune suppression of the body, further reducing the body's resistance and increasing the risk of new coronary pneumonia. In addition, activation of nerve cells and autoimmune antibodies in the brain may also be the reasons behind it.
Of course, this article also has some limitations: first, and more than 95% of the respondents are white Americans (interestingly, the top two authors in this article are clearly Chinese students, and they may not even be Chinese). This will bring a question: Is the conclusions of this study still valid in other races and other countries? Second, all the data sources of this study come from subjectively filling out , and its authenticity and objectivity geometry are unknown; third, as a classic epidemiological survey , this article only reveals the correlation between psychological state and sequelae of COVID-19, and cannot provide the causal connection between the two ; finally, it may be a bit nitpicking, but this study was led by the School of Public Health after all, so the researchers do not seem to provide corresponding intervention services to subjects with psychological problems .
To summarize, although the concept that psychological stress can make people prone to illness has been widely accepted, this article is indeed the first study to verify the relationship between psychological stress and the sequelae of COVID-19 in such a large group. It seems that in order to avoid becoming a "Xiaoyang person", even if you are really unfortunate enough to recover soon after being infected, you should still pay attention to your physical health and do a good job of psychological construction at any time.
