A new Harvard study of more than 800,000 people in the US has provided valuable insights into the demographics and clinical profiles of those who develop “long COVID”.
The findings showed that long COVID is more likely to affect older females with preexisting chronic conditions, including high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and depression.
The study provides valuable information for clinicians and healthcare organizations, enabling them to better screen, monitor, and treat patients with long COVID.
It may also help individuals assess their risk of developing the condition and the importance of taking steps to protect themselves against COVID-19.
The researchers found that the risk of developing long COVID was highest among those with chronic conditions.
The study also showed that symptoms of long COVID can persist long after the initial infection, with a small peak of diagnoses around one year after the initial COVID-19 diagnosis.
This is longer than the follow-up period of most initial studies and highlights the need for continued research into the condition’s long-term effects.
Long COVID, also known as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), can involve multiple organ systems and cause symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue, and brain fog.
The condition has affected tens of millions of people worldwide and is a major public health concern.
Despite the widespread prevalence of long COVID, much remains unknown about the condition, including how it develops, what causes it, and the most effective treatments.
This is due in part to the difficulty of studying the condition, particularly over a long period of time and among diverse groups of people.
In the study, the team looked at two groups of people who might be considered to have long COVID under different definitions that have been in use over the course of the pandemic.
They also included a comparison group of 600,000 people who similarly had COVID-19 but did not meet any of the definitions of long COVID.
One group of over 8,300 people met a narrow definition of long COVID, which required an official long COVID diagnostic code in the patient’s medical claims.
For people who met this narrow definition, long COVID was linked to multiple common pre-pandemic conditions such as lung disease, depression, diabetes, obesity, and other common conditions.
This means that people who had these conditions before the pandemic were more likely to be diagnosed with long COVID.
Contrary to findings in many previous studies, the researchers found that pre-pandemic HIV/AIDS, metastatic cancer, and solid tumors without metastasis—markers of a suppressed immune system that are typically associated with more severe COVID-19 disease—were not associated with having a diagnosis of long COVID.
The second group included more than 200,000 people who had new symptoms of long COVID that appeared between 28 and 180 days after initial COVID-19 diagnosis.
In this more broadly defined group of long haulers, long COVID was linked to all categories of preexisting conditions, including those indicating immunosuppression.
One explanation for the difference might be that the group that met the broad definition included a substantially larger sample size in which smaller differences relative to the non-long haulers comparison group were more statistically significant.
The team says understanding how to deal with the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is very important.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about nasal spray that lowers COVID-19 infection by 60%, and low-sodium plant-based diets may prevent COVID-19 better.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The study was conducted by Zirui Song et al and published in Health Affairs.
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