Application of dry carbon dioxide baths and magnetotherapy in the treatment of patients during the post COVID period

Aim . To study the effect of dry carbon dioxide baths (DCB) and magnetotherapy (MT) on quality-oflife indicators, dyspnoea severity, psychological status and systemic inflammation in patients who had recovered from novel coronavirus infection (NCI). Materials and methods . Patients with a history of NCI were divided into two groups. Group 1 (n = 20) received a course of DCB; Group 2 (n = 20) received a course of MT. A control group (n = 20) comprised relatively healthy individuals with no history of NCI (absence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 S-protein IgG at enrolment), matched by sex and age with the study groups. At baseline — all participants — and after treatment — patients in Groups 1 and 2 — completed questionnaires assessing quality of life, anxiety level and severity of respiratory symptoms (SF-36, HADS, mMRC, Borg scale). Blood plasma was collected to determine C-reactive protein (CRP) by ELISA (Cloud Clone Corp., Wuhan, Hubei, China). Results . Post-COVID patients had lower quality-of-life scores and higher levels of anxiety, depression, dyspnoea and exercise intolerance than controls. Both DCB and MT improved quality-of-life scores and reduced anxiety, depression, dyspnoea and exercise-induced symptom burden in post-COVID patients compared with the control group. According to SF-36, mean total quality of life increased by 9.3% in Group 1 and by 4.55% in Group 2. On the HADS scale, anxiety fell by 16.3% and depression by 19.0% in Group 1; by 8.6% and 14.3%, respectively, in Group 2. In Group 1 the mMRC dyspnoea score decreased by 55%, and the Borg score by 50%; in Group 2 by 35% and 22.5%, respectively. DCB also significantly lowered CRP (p < 0.001) from 1.12 [0.42; 1.81] mg/mL before treatment to 0.91 [0.26; 1.57] mg/mL afterwards. Conclusion . Dry carbon dioxide baths and magnetotherapy appear to be promising approaches for mitigating manifestations of post COVID syndrome, but their efficacy should be confirmed in larger studies.