COVID-Specific Long-Term Sequelae in Comparison to Common Viral Respiratory Infections: An Analysis of 17,487 Infected Adult Patients 2022,Baskett

ABSTRACT
Background
better understanding of long-term health effects after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has become one of the healthcare priorities in the current pandemic. We analyzedlarge and diverse patient cohort to study health effects related to SARS-CoV-2 infection occurring more than one month post-infection.

Methods
We analyzed 17,487 patients who received diagnoses for SARS-CoV-2 infection in a total of 122 healthcare facilities in the United States prior to April, 14,2022. Patients were propensity score matched with patients diagnosed with the common cold, influenza, or viral pneumonia from March 1, 2020, to April 1, 2021. For each outcome, SARS-CoV-2 was compared to a generic Viral Respiratory Infection (VRI) by predicting diagnoses in the period between 30 and 365 days post-infection. Both COVID-19 and VRI patients were propensity score matched with patients with no record of COVID-19 or VRI and the same methodology was applied. Diagnoses where COVID-19 infection was a significant positive predictor in both COVID-19 vs VRI and COVID-19 vs Control comparisons were considered COVID-19-specific effects.

Results
Compared to common VRIs, SARS-CoV-2 was associated with diagnoses palpitations, hair loss, fatigue, chest pain, dyspnea, joint pain, and obesity in the post-infectious period.

Conclusions
We identify that some diagnoses commonly described as “long COVID” do not appear significantly more frequent post-COVID-19 infection compared to other common VRIs. We also identify sequelae which are specifically associated with a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.

https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofac683/6953331

 

Article about the study

Not all post COVID-19 condition symptoms are specific to the virus

https://hospitalpharmacyeurope.com/...condition-symptoms-are-specific-to-the-virus/

 

That's a fairly middling description of ME. They vaguely reference PEM as "exhaustion", describe cognitive impairment as a psychiatric symptom, then describe depression as an ME symptom. (It's not.) I'll cut them slack because PEM-induced mood swings are real, but it's odd of them to emphasize that.

 

Moved from the Long Covid in the media thread

Researchers looking for long COVID symptoms find only 7

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/researchers-looking-long-covid-symptoms-find-only-seven

The study being discussed is here: https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/10/1/ofac683/6953331

 

Predictably, this is a study using health records. Never use filtered/interpreted data as if it's raw data. Health records are a terrible source of data for research.