The study reveals the pandemic’s broad impact on long-term COVID patients and people with other illnesses

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A new study finds that long-term COVID patients can experience many of the same persistent negative effects on their physical, mental and social health as those experienced by people who develop illnesses other than COVID.

The results, which will be published December 1, 2022 in peer review JAMA Network is open, based on comparing people known to have COVID-19 with individuals with similar symptoms who test positive for COVID. Researchers found that 40% of the COVID-positive group and 54% of the COVID-negative group reported moderate to severe residual symptoms three months after enrollment in the study.

Many diseases, including COVID, can produce symptoms that negatively affect a person’s sense of well-being that persist for months after the initial infection, which is what we’ve seen here. Because these changes appear to be similar for COVID and COVID+ participants, this suggests that the experience of the pandemic itself, and associated stress, may play a role in slowing people’s recovery from any disease.”

Lauren Weisk, lead author and associate professor of medicine in the department of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Weisk noted that the study included people with severe COVID and those without COVID (but sick with some other disease) to examine the impact of COVID on an individual’s well-being, also compared to the general population.

“We found that in terms of well-being, the COVID-positive and COVID-negative groups look more alike than different, but both still have worse well-being scores than the general population.”

The multisite study was conducted in English and Spanish under the umbrella of INSPIRE (Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infection), a project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Participating locations include the University of California, Los Angeles; Rush University Medical Center in Chicago; University of California, San Francisco; University of Washington in Seattle. Yale University UTHealth Houston University of Texas Southwestern. and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

The 1,000 study participants were 18 years of age or older who:

  • has been tested for COVID-19 within the previous 42 days of study enrollment with positive or negative test results and without a prior diagnosis of COVID-19;
  • Has symptoms known to be associated with COVID-19, such as cough, fever, headache or fatigue, at the time of testing;
  • had access to an internet-connected device, such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer, to complete online surveys; And the
  • They completed an initial survey at the time of study enrollment and a follow-up survey three months later that asked about their physical function, anxiety, depression, fatigue, social engagement, sleep disturbance, pain interference, and cognitive function.

Of these participants, 722 (72%) tested positive for COVID and 278 (28%) tested negative.

In general, those who tested positive for COVID had self-reported physical and mental health symptoms three months after infection that were similar to those who developed illnesses other than COVID during the pandemic. However, the COVID-positive group experienced better improvements in their social well-being compared to the COVID-negative group.

The study may be limited by the possibility that some patients who are sicker and at risk of contracting COVID for a prolonged period may be unable or unwilling to participate; lack of clarity about what conditions some COVID-negative participants had at enrolment, such as bacterial pneumonia or respiratory syncytial virus, making it difficult to determine if they had more or less serious self-reported findings; The fact that the participants were recruited from December 2020 through September 2021 makes the results not applicable to post-COVID variants; and that COVID-19 tests are sometimes inaccurate. Finally, the participants’ well-being was assessed 3 months after their initial illness; Many diseases take time to heal, and comparing improvements in symptoms over a longer period of time will be essential to a good understanding of long-term COVID.

However, the results highlight the importance of comparing people with COVID-19 and people who are negative for COVID-19 to assess the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the population. said Dr. Joanne Elmore, co-first author on the paper and professor of medicine in the department of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“Researchers and clinicians now have a better understanding of well-being outcomes related to COVID-19 as a result of this study,” said Elmore, who is also the principal investigator for the UCLA site. “The results highlight the potentially broad impact of the pandemic on our overall health, including the emotional, social and mental aspects that are less tracked, along with the well-recognized physical effects.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (75D30120C08008) funded this research.

source:

Journal reference:

Wisk, L.E., et al. (2022) Association of primary SARS-CoV-2 test positivity with patient-reported health status 3 months after onset of disease symptoms. JAMA Network is open. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.44486.

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