A new study published in Journal of General Internal Medicine found that 30% of people treated for COVID developed ‘Long COVID’. Risk of Long COVID was greater in people with a history of hospitalisation, diabetes, and higher BMI; and less in organ transplant recipients and those not on private health insurance. Surprisingly, ethnicity, older age, and socioeconomic status were not linked to the syndrome despite the link to greater risk of severe illness and mortality.
Of the 309 people with long COVID studied, the most persistent symptoms were fatigue and shortness of breath (31% and 15%, respectively) in hospitalised persons, and loss of sense of smell (16%) in outpatients.
The incidence and risk factors of Long COVID, and even how to define the syndrome, have remained unclear throughout the pandemic. The researchers sought evaluate its association with demographics and clinical characteristics in order to devise the most effective treatments.
The study examined 1038 people enrolled in the UCLA COVID Ambulatory Program from April 2020 to February 2021. Of those, 309 developed Long COVID, determined by them reporting persistent symptoms on questionnaires 60 or 90 days after infection or hospitalisation.
Potential weaknesses in the study include the subjective nature of how patients rated their symptoms, the limited number of symptoms the researchers evaluated, and limited information about patients’ pre-existing conditions.
“This study illustrates the need to follow diverse patient populations longitudinally to understand the Long COVID disease trajectory and evaluate how individual factors such as pre-existing co-morbidities, sociodemographic factors, vaccination status and virus variant type affect type and persistence of Long COVID symptoms,” said Dr Sun Yoo, health sciences assistant clinical professor at UCLA. “Studying outcomes in a single health system can minimise variation in quality of medical care. Our study also raises questions such as: Why were patients with commercial insurance twice as likely to develop Long COVID than patients insured through Medicaid? Because persistent symptoms can be subjective in nature, we need better tools to accurately diagnose Long COVID and to differentiate it from exacerbations of other emerging or chronic conditions. Finally, we need to ensure equitable access to outpatient Long COVID care.”
Source: University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences
