Long COVID symptomatology after twelve months and its impact on quality of life according to initial COVID-19 disease severity, 2022, Fischer et al

Abstract

Introduction
Long COVID is characterized by a variety of symptoms and an important burden for affected people. Our objective was to describe Long COVID symptomatology according to initial COVID-19 severity.

Methods
Predi-COVID cohort study participants, recruited at the time of acute COVID-19 infection, completed a detailed 12-month symptoms and quality of life questionnaire. Frequencies and co-occurrences of symptoms were assessed.

Results
Among the 289 participants who fully completed the 12-month questionnaire, 59.5% reported at least one symptom with a median of 6 symptoms. Participants with an initial moderate or severe acute illness declared more frequently one or more symptoms (82.6% vs 38.6%, p < 0.001) and had on average 6.8 more symptoms (CI 95% [4.18; 9.38]) than initially asymptomatic participants who developed symptoms after the acute infection. Overall, 12.5% of the participants could not envisage coping with their symptoms in the long term. Frequently reported symptoms, like neurological and cardiovascular symptoms, but also less frequent such as gastrointestinal symptoms, tended to cluster.

Conclusion
Frequencies and burden of symptoms present 12 months after acute COVID-19 infection increased with the severity of the acute illness. Long COVID likely consists of multiple sub-categories rather than one single entity. This work will contribute to the better understanding of Long COVID and to the definition of precision health strategies.

Open access, https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofac397/6656444

 

I really wonder how common it is for infections to be asymptomatic. It could be the norm and we wouldn't even know it, not without something like Covid forcing someone to look. Clearly the only way this was going to happen.

What if this is the norm and a significant way infections spread? People without symptoms don't take precautions, it could even a main driver of most viruses and we'd have no way of knowing because this was as unthinkable as bacteria surviving in stomach lining, someone inconceivable that pathogens are pretty good at surviving harsh environments.

This is definitely not in immunology textbooks anyway. Even passed the initial insistence that asymptomatic infectious are ridiculous, there doesn't appear to be any curiosity at all over this, medicine is just letting evidence passing by without any interest in following it. I'm constantly shocked by the lack of curiosity on display here, the absence of scientific thinking.

Published by Oxford but the study was done in Luxembourg.

 

@rvallee

I am also shocked by medicine's lack of curiosity.

Maybe part of the problem is how medicine is structured. There are disincentives for being curious. No time, no money, sometimes ridicule from colleagues and the powers that be.

 

There's actually a fair bit of research on this subject for flu, but the results vary. In NZ, they say 80% are asymptomatic based on random population level-sampling, but other studies have found lower numbers.

What's interesting with Covid is that the number of asymptomatic infections, according to the ONS survey, has actually stayed fairly constant over the last 18 months. I'd have thought you'd expect more asymptomatic cases with the growing number of re-infections and increasing vaccination.

 

That makes the complete shock over when it happened for Covid all that much worse and bizarre. All those studies and no one even learns from them. What's the point? Maybe it's pretend shock, which I don't think is any better. Given the bizarre insistence that Covid cannot possibly last longer than 2 weeks, because "viruses don't do that". Nevermind that monkeypox seems to last for several weeks and now the script is that it's normal.

It's probably the reflexive lying for reassurance. What a disaster this continues to be. And not about to change anytime soon, or ever without being imposed by legislation. Good grief is legislation mandating medical professionals to tell the truth necessary. It's absurd that the medical profession has lower standards than the legal profession, where lying on the job, despite the general idea that lawyers are shady, will get you disbarred, if not prosecuted.