Risk, determinants, and persistence of long-COVID in a population-based cohort study in Catalonia, 2025, Kogevinas et al

Risk, determinants, and persistence of long-COVID in a population-based cohort study in Catalonia

Manolis Kogevinas, Marianna Karachaliou, Ana Espinosa, Susana Iraola-Guzmán, Gemma Castaño-Vinyals, Laura Delgado-Ortiz, Xavier Farré, Natàlia Blay, Neil Pearce, Magda Bosch de Basea, Eva Alonso Nogués, Carlota Dobaño, Gemma Moncunill, Rafael de Cid, Judith Garcia-Aymerich

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Background
Long-COVID has mostly been investigated in clinical settings. We aimed to assess the risk, subtypes, persistence, and determinants of long-COVID in a prospective population-based study of adults with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Catalonia.

Methods
We examined 2764 infected individuals from a population-based cohort (COVICAT) established before the pandemic and followed up three times across the pandemic (2020, 2021, 2023). We assessed immunoglobulin (Ig)G levels against SARS-CoV-2, clinical, vaccination, sociodemographic, and lifestyle factors. Long-COVID risk and subtypes were defined based on participant-reported symptoms and electronic health records. We identified a total of 647 long-COVID cases and compared them with 2117 infected individuals without the condition.

Results
Between 2021 and 2023, 23% of infected subjects developed long-COVID symptoms. In 56% of long-COVID cases in 2021, symptoms persisted for 2 years.

Long-COVID presented clinically in three subtypes, mild neuromuscular, mild respiratory, and severe multi-organ. The latter was associated with persistent long-COVID.

Risk was higher among females, participants under 50 years, of low socioeconomic status, severe COVID-19 infection, elevated pre-vaccination IgG levels, obesity, and prior chronic disease, particularly asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and mental health conditions.

A lower risk was associated to pre-infection vaccination, infection after omicron became the dominant variant, higher physical activity levels, and sleeping 6–8 h.

Vaccination during the 3 months post-infection was also protective against long-COVID.

Conclusions
Long-COVID persisted for up to 2 years in half of the cases, and risk was influenced by multiple factors.

Link | PDF (BMC Medicine) [Open Access]

 

News Release 13-Mar-2025
Symptoms of long-COVID can last up to two years after infection with COVID-19
According to a study of the COVICAT cohort, almost one in four people infected with SARS-CoV-2 suffered from long-COVID

Peer-Reviewed Publication
Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1076685

 

Five years in and we're still getting these "up to two years" headlines. (Not the researchers' fault.)

 

Yeah, ‘up to’ is a misrepresentation of the study. They found that it can last ‘at least’ two years.

 

Seems like it’s a press release kind of thing from the university. I’ve emailed the contact at the bottom of the page to inform them of the inaccuracy.