| |
Most Long COVID Cases Started With Mild Symptoms: Study
|
| |
| |
PUBLISHED STUDY ATTACHED
Download the PDF here
January 06, 2023
Just because you start out with a mild case of COVID-19 doesn't mean you won't develop long COVID, researchers say.
"We found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19," researchers Sarah Wulf Hanson, PhD, MPH, and Theo Vos, MD, PhD, both of the University of Washington, said in an article about their research in The Conversation.
"After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog -- or a combination of these - that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury."
Their study was published in October in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The research team looked at data from 54 studies on 1.2 million people in 22 nations who reported having COVID symptoms. They defined long COVID as a continuation of symptoms 3 months after initial infection, with those symptoms lasting at least 2 months.
Women had twice the risk of men of developing long COVID and four times the risk of children, the study found, and 1 in 7 people infected still had symptoms a year later. People who were hospitalized with COVID were more likely to develop long COVID, but most COVID patients were not hospitalized.
Most of the people in the study were infected before Omicron became the dominant strain. It's not clear if Omicron infections will result in as much long COVID, but initial research shows lower risk, the researchers wrote.
Long COVID has an immense impact on people's lives and their ability to work, Hanson and Vos wrote, noting that researchers should make finding effective and affordable treatments for long COVID a priority.
Sources:
Journal of the American Medical Association. "Estimated Global Proportions of Individuals With Persistent Fatigue, Cognitive, and Respiratory Symptom Clusters Following Symptomatic COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021."
The Conversation: "Long COVID stemmed from mild cases of COVID-19 in most people, according to a new multicountry study."
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/986624
----------------------------------
(THE CONVERSATION) - Even mild COVID-19 cases can have major and long-lasting effects on people's health. That is one of the key findings from our recent multicountry study on long COVID-19 - or long COVID - recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
We believe that finding effective and affordable treatments for people living with long COVID should be a priority for researchers and research funders. Long COVID clinics have opened to provide specialized care, but the treatments they offer are limited, inconsistent and may be costly.
We found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog - or a combination of these - that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women have twice the risk of men and four times the risk of children for developing long COVID.
Our systematic, multicountry analysis of this condition delivered findings that illuminate the potentially steep human and economic costs of long COVID around the world. Many people who are living with the condition are working-age adults. Being unable to work for many months could cause people to lose their income, their livelihoods and their housing. For parents or caregivers living with long COVID, the condition may make them unable to care for their loved ones.
We think, based on the pervasiveness and severity of long COVID, that it is keeping people from working and therefore contributing to labor shortages. Long COVID could also be a factor in how people losing their jobs has disproportionately affected women.
We found that patients who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had a greater risk of developing long COVID - and of having longer-lasting symptoms - compared with people who had not been hospitalized. However, because the vast majority of COVID-19 cases do not require hospitalization, many more cases of long COVID have arisen from these milder cases despite their lower risk. Among all people with long COVID, our study found that nearly one out of every seven were still experiencing these symptoms a year later, and researchers don't yet know how many of these cases may become chronic.
https://www.wane.com/community/health/coronavirus/long-covid-stemmed-from-mild-cases-of-covid-19-in-most-people-according-to-a-new-multicountry-study/
Conclusions
This study presents modeled estimates of the proportion of individuals with at least 1 of the 3 self-reported Long COVID symptom clusters (persistent fatigue with bodily pain or mood swings; cognitive problems; or ongoing respiratory problems) 3 months after symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.
A prolonged state of low-grade infection with a hyperimmune response, coagulation or vasculopathy, endocrine and autonomic dysregulation, and a maladaptation of the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 pathway have been postulated as the underlying pathophysiology of Long COVID.76 Deconditioning due to prolonged immobilization during hospitalization may compound these problems.77
The analyses in this study are based on the WHO case definition that stipulates a minimum period of 3 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection before referring to ongoing symptoms as Long COVID or post-COVID-19 condition. Others have suggested a threshold of 3 weeks to define a case of Long COVID, arguing that no competent virus has been replicated beyond 3 weeks of infection, but periods of up to 12 weeks have been suggested to define the start of Long COVID.76,78,79
Of individuals with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, an estimated 3.2% (95% UI, 0.6%-10.0%) had persistent fatigue with bodily pain or mood swings, 3.7% (95% UI, 0.9%-9.6%) had ongoing respiratory problems, and 2.2% (95% UI, 0.3%-7.6%) had cognitive problems after adjusting for health status before COVID-19, comprising an estimated 51.0% (95% UI, 16.9%-92.4%), 60.4% (95% UI, 18.9%-89.1%), and 35.4% (95% UI, 9.4%-75.1%), respectively, of Long COVID cases. In an estimated 38.4% (95% UI, 7.94%-96.0%) of Long COVID cases, 2 or all 3 of the symptom clusters overlapped (Figure 2 and eTable 15 in Supplement 1).
Globally, an estimated 63.2% (95% UI, 59.7%-66.3%) of individuals with Long COVID were female. The estimated risk of Long COVID at 3 months was lower in individuals with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection who were not hospitalized and were younger than 20 years of age (2.7% [95% UI, 0.8%-6.7%]) than in those aged 20 years or older for both men (4.8% [95% UI, 1.5%-11.3%]) and women (9.9% [95% UI, 3.4%-21.2%]) (Table 3 and eTable 14 in Supplement 1). The difference in the estimated risk of Long COVID between individuals who were younger than 20 years of age and men aged 20 years or older was 2.0% (95% UI, 0.7%-4.6%), the difference between those younger than 20 years of age and women aged 20 years or older was 7.2% (95% UI, 2.6%-15.1%), and the difference between men and women aged 20 years or older was 5.1% (95% UI, 1.8-10.9), which were statistically significant differences.
Among COVID-19 survivors who developed Long COVID in 2020 and 2021 and had symptoms 3 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, an estimated 15.1% (95% UI, 10.3%-21.1%) continued to have persistent symptoms at 12 months (Table 3). The global new cases with Long COVID symptom clusters by sex and severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection appear in eTable 16 in Supplement 1. The global counts of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and cases of Long COVID by country appear in eTable 17 in Supplement 1.
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
