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World J Clin Infect Dis. Jan 15, 2021; 11(1): 1-10
Published online Jan 15, 2021. doi: 10.5495/wjcid.v11.i1.1
Life after recovery from SARS, influenza, and Middle East respiratory syndrome: An insight into possible long-term consequences of COVID-19
Amir Masoud Afsahi, Alecio F Lombardi, Sara Valizadeh, Ali Gholamrezanezhad
Amir Masoud Afsahi, Alecio F Lombardi, Department of Radiology, UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States
Sara Valizadeh, Department of Restorative Dentistry, School of Dentistry, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1439955991, Iran
Ali Gholamrezanezhad, Department of Radiology, Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States
Author contributions: Afsahi AM and Lombardi AF equally contributed to conceptualization, data extraction, and drafting; Valizadeh S contributed to data extraction; Gholamrezanezhad A contributed to final and scientific revision.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ali Gholamrezanezhad, MD, Assistant Professor, Doctor, Department of Radiology, Keck School of Medicine of USC, 1975 Zonal Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States. ali.gholamrezanezhad@med.usc.edu
Received: November 10, 2020
Peer-review started: November 10, 2020
First decision: November 29, 2020
Revised: December 2, 2020
Accepted: December 23, 2020
Article in press: December 23, 2020
Published online: January 15, 2021
Processing time: 63 Days and 18.2 Hours
Abstract

Viral infectious diseases have become an increased public health issue in the past 20 years. The outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) in 2002, influenza H1N1 in 2009, Middle East respiratory syndrome-CoV in 2012, and the current new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 have shown that viral infectious diseases are a major concern in the 21st century. As the world lives under the pandemic of a new coronavirus (COVID-19), knowing the clinical characteristics from those past diseases and their long-term outcomes is important to understand the current coronavirus pandemic and its complications and consequences better and plan for possible future outbreaks. Several long-term complications have been described with these respiratory viral diseases, such as decreased pulmonary function, pulmonary fibrosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, avascular necrosis of bone, polyneuropathy, encephalitis, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. This article summarizes several studies describing chronic complications and long-term outcomes of patients recovered from these viral syndromes.

Keywords: COVID-19; Long-term; Consequences; SARS; Middle East respiratory syndrome; Influenza

Core Tip: As the world now lives more under the acute burden of this pandemic, very soon possible long term and late consequences of this disaster will appear and the globe will be challenged by those little known before and probably unknown complications. These late complications can potentially be due to the disease itself and/or the side effects of medications or medical interventions applied. Our task as health care professionals is to have a high suspicion upon approaching patients with history of this disease. We believe that by reviewing the recent outbreaks' long-term complications, we will have a better understanding of these potential complications.