Study Reveals Risk factors for long COVID

Early in the pandemic, many people who had SARS-Cov-2 infection or COVID-19 began to report that they couldn't get rid off their symptoms even after a month or more-unusually long for a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract-or developed new, persistent symptoms soon after the infection cleared.

Although it’s still not clear what causes post-COVID-19 conditions or “long COVID”, a new study by researchers at Columbia University, published in

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JAMA Network Open, confirmed the high burden of long COVID and sheds light on who’s at greatest risk.

The study involved over 4,700 participants from the Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for COVID-19 Research, who were asked to report their time to recovery after infection with SARS-CoV-2.

The study found that, between 2020 and early 2023, the median recovery time after SARS-CoV-2 infection was 20 days, and more than one in five adults did not recover within three months.

Women and adults with pre-pandemic cardiovascular disease were less likely to recover within three months. Other pre-pandemic health conditions—including chronic kidney disease, diabetes, asthma, chronic lung disease, depressive symptoms, and a history of smoking—were linked to longer recovery times, but these associations were no longer significant after accounting for sex, cardiovascular disease, vaccination, and variant exposure.

The study also found that people with a milder infection—including those who were vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 and those who were infected with an Omicron variant—were more likely to recover quickly. Recovery time was similar for subsequent infections.

“Although studies have suggested that many patients with long COVID experience mental health challenges, we did not find that depressive symptoms prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection were a major risk factor for long COVID. Our study clearly establishes that long COVID posed a substantial personal and societal burden,” says Oelsner. By identifying who was likely to have experienced a lengthy recovery, we have a better understanding of who should be involved in ongoing studies of how to lessen or prevent the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection,” said the authors.

Reference: Oelsner EC, Sun Y, Balte PP, et al. Epidemiologic Features of Recovery From SARS-CoV-2 Infection. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(6):e2417440. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.17440