Symptoms of Long-COVID 1-Year After a COVID-19 Outbreak Among Sailors on a French Aircraft Carrier, 2023,

Symptoms of Long-COVID 1-Year After a COVID-19 Outbreak Among Sailors on a French Aircraft Carrier
Anne Perisse, François De Cacqueray, David Delarbre, Hélène Marsaa, Cedric Bergmann, Virginie Da Silva, Antoine Bronstein, Nicolas Paleiron, Nastasia Menoud, Jacques Cobola, Catherine Verret, Aurélie Mayet, Olivier Bylicki

Objectives
While persistent symptoms have been reported after the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), long-term data on outpatients with mild COVID-19 are lacking. The objective was to describe symptoms persisting for 12 months.

Methods
This prospective cohort study on 1767 sailors of an aircraft carrier in which a Covid-19 outbreak occurred during a mission in April 2020 described predefined self-reported symptoms of Long-COVID at 6, 9 and 12 months. Logistic-regression analyses were used to identify correlates for Long-COVID at months 6, 9 and 12.

Results
Among the 641 participants, 619 (35%) completed at least one follow-up questionnaire (413 COVID-positive and 206 COVID-negative). Symptoms of Long-COVID were reported by 53.7%, 55.2% and 54.3% of COVID-positive participants vs. 31.2%, 23.3% and 40.0% in COVID-negative patients, at 6 (p<.002), 9 (p<.002) and 12 months (p=.13), respectively. The most frequent symptoms reported were concentration and memory difficulties, asthenia and sleep disorders.

Conclusion
In this study more than half of COVID-positive outpatients reported persistent symptoms up to 12 months post-quarantine. These findings suggests that all patients, including those with mild disease, can be affected by Long-COVID. A lack of difference at 12 months with COVID-negative patienys prompts caution. The symptoms of Long-COVID are so non-specific that they may be viewed as the consequence of multiple intercurrent factors.

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Arguably this could go in the psychosomatic sub-forum given its credulous referencing of the prior JAMA paper.

This nonsense should not still be being propagated. The cohort was in confined quarters on an aircraft carrier that experienced a large scale outbreak. From those responding in this study, 66.7% of all crew members were documented as PCR positive.

It's been clear since before the JAMA paper that there was a large false negative rate with anti-spike and anti-nucleocapsid antibody testing and that this was associated with higher likelihood of long Covid. A potential explanation has recently been offered as a mis-fired immune response, with un-coordinated humoral and cellular responses in the overall adaptive response. See Preprint: Long COVID manifests with T cell dysregulation, inflammation, and an uncoordinated adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2.

 

I agree this seems a particularly low response rate amongst a captive group used to obeying orders, especially when compared to a recent study of Chinese students covered here that was reporting an over 90% response rate, though that too was not a study that inspired confidence.