some people recovering from covid19 had an elevated heart rate for months according to a new study some people recovering from a coronavirus infection had an elevated heart rate for months according to a new studycreditmichele tantussireutersjuly 7 2021last spring when the nations covid19 cases were soaring and tests were in short supply some scientists wondered whether a new approach to disease surveillance might be on americans wristsone in five americans uses a fitbit apple watch or other wearable fitness tracker and over the past year several studies have suggested that the devices which can continually collect data on heart rates body temperature physical activity and more could help detect early signs of covid19 symptomsnow research suggests that these wearables can also help track patients recovery from the disease providing insight into its longterm effectsin a paper published on wednesday in the journal jama network open researchers studying fitbit data reported that people who tested positive for covid19 displayed behavioral and physiological changes including an elevated heart rate that could last for weeks or months these symptoms lasted longer in people with covid than in those with other respiratory illnesses the scientists foundthis was an interesting study and i think its important said dr robert hirten a gastroenterologist and wearables expert at the icahn school of medicine at mount sinai who was not involved in the new work wearable devices offer an ability for us to be able to monitor people unobtrusively over long periods of time to see in an objective way how really has the virus affected themthe results are from the digital engagement and tracking for early control and treatment detect trial run by scientists at the scripps research translational institute in la jolla calif from march 25 2020 to jan 24 2021 more than 37000 people enrolled in the trialparticipants downloaded the mydatahelps research app and agreed to share data from their fitbit apple watch or other wearable device they also used the app to report illness symptoms and the results of any covid19 testsin october the same researchers reported in nature medicine that when they combined wearable data with selfreported symptoms they could detect covid19 cases more accurately than when they analyzed symptoms alonebut the data the researchers realized could also help them track what happened to people after the worst of the illness had passed people recovering from covid have reported a wide range of lasting health effects including fatigue brain fog shortness of breath headache depression heart palpitations and chest pain these lingering effects are often known as long covidthe new study focuses on a subset of 875 fitbitwearing participants who reported a fever cough body aches or other symptoms of a respiratory illness and were tested for covid19 of those 234 people tested positive for the disease the rest were presumed to have other kinds of infectionsimagecreditgregory bullassociated pressparticipants in both groups slept more and walked less after they got sick and their resting heart rates rose but these changes were more