Over Half of Patients With Long COVID Experienced Symptoms for 2 Years
The most commonly reported symptoms of long COVID include neurological, muscular, respiratory, and psychological.
Between 2021 and 2023, approximately 23% of patients who had COVID-19 developed long COVID, with more than half having symptoms that persisted for 2 years, according to results of a study published in BMC Medicine. Further, the risk of developing long COVID included various factors.1,2
The most commonly reported symptoms of long COVID included neurological, muscular, respiratory, and psychological. Image Credit: bizoo_n | stock.adobe.com
“Being a woman, having experienced a severe COVID-19 infection, and having a pre-existing chronic disease, such as asthma, are clear risk factors,” Marianna Karachaliou, coauthor of the study and researcher at ISGlobal, said in a news release.1 “In addition, we observed that people with obesity and high levels of IgG antibodies prior to vaccination were more likely to develop long-COVID.”
The CDC defines long COVID as “a chronic condition that occurs after SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least 3 months,” and includes a range of symptoms that could improve, worsen, or persist. Patients more likely to develop long COVID include those who are women, those who are Hispanic or Latino, those who have severe COVID-19, those with underlying health conditions and are 65 years and older, and those who did not get vaccinated.3
Although data on risk factors exists, the investigators of the current study stated that there is a lack of data on long COVID progression. In this study, they used a population-based cohort that included multiple clinical, sociodemographic, and lifestyle characteristics. The risk, course, subtype, and risk factors were assessed. Data from a COVID-19 population-based cohort in Catalonia were included, and participants completed COVID-19-related surveys and provided samples from June to November 2020, June to August 2021, and February to May 2023. Investigators included individuals with COVID-19 at any time who completed the 3 surveys.2
There were 2764 individuals who were infected with COVID-19 included in the study, and 23.4% reported long COVID symptoms. The most commonly reported symptoms included neurological (63%), muscular (39%), respiratory (28%), and psychological (21%). Investigators identified 3 subgroups: 51% included high prevalence of neurological symptoms and prevalence of respiratory, skin, musculoskeletal, and sensory (mild neuromuscular); 20.6% included the highest prevalence of respiratory and low-to-moderate prevalence of additional symptoms (mild respiratory); and 27.8% included a high prevalence of psychological, neurological, respiratory, skin, and musculoskeletal symptoms with low-to-moderate prevalence of remaining symptoms (severe multiorgan).2
Among cases of long COVID reported in 2021, 56% reported persistent symptoms in 2023, with the highest risk for those in the severe multiorgan group. The results also remained consistent that women were at higher risk of long COVID than men, as well as people with primary or lower education compared with university education. However, there was a lower risk for individuals above 65 years compared with those younger than 50 years, according to the authors. Patients with regular/poor health in 2020 also had an increased risk of long COVID compared with good/excellent health, and prior chronic conditions were also associated with higher risk. For prior chronic diseases, anxiety/depression had the highest risk, followed by digestive diseases, rheumatisms, and chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.2
As for severity, patients with mild/moderate infection had a 3 times higher risk compared with those who were asymptomatic; however, those with severe or critical infection had a 9 times higher risk. There was strong protection for long COVID for patients who were vaccinated prior to infection, and repeated vaccination resulted in the lower risk.2
“Our results show that a significant percentage of the population has long COVID, which in some cases affects their quality of life,” Judith Garcia-Aymerich, researcher at ISGlobal, said in a news release.1 “Establishing collaborations with other countries will be key to understanding whether these findings can be extrapolated to other populations.
