Painless, Silent Organ Damage Seen In Covid 'Long Hauler': Study

Even non-hospitalized patients with no renal problems have almost a twofold higher risk of developing end-stage kidney disease, compared with someone who never had Covid.

Kidney damage is painless and silent, and it's the latest ailment to be identified afflicting a large swath of Covid-19 survivors. Injury to the blood-filtering organ can occur among people who recover from the coronavirus at home, and escalates with the severity of Covid, a study found. Even non-hospitalized patients with no renal problems have almost a twofold higher risk of developing end-stage kidney disease, compared with someone who never had Covid.  The findings, reported Wednesday in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, highlight yet another pernicious burden of the pandemic that's sickened more than 200 million people globally. The data show 7.8 extra people needing dialysis or a kidney transplant per 10,000 of these mild-to-moderate Covid patients.