TY - JOUR
T1 - “The burden of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms in a multinational network cohort analysis”
AU - Kostka, Kristin
AU - Roel, Elena
AU - Trinh, Nhung T.H.
AU - Mercadé-Besora, Núria
AU - Delmestri, Antonella
AU - Mateu, Lourdes
AU - Paredes, Roger
AU - Duarte-Salles, Talita
AU - Prieto-Alhambra, Daniel
AU - Català, Martí
AU - Jödicke, Annika M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/11/17
Y1 - 2023/11/17
N2 - Persistent symptoms following the acute phase of COVID-19 present a major burden to both the affected and the wider community. We conducted a cohort study including over 856,840 first COVID-19 cases, 72,422 re-infections and more than 3.1 million first negative-test controls from primary care electronic health records from Spain and the UK (Sept 2020 to Jan 2022 (UK)/March 2022 (Spain)). We characterised post-acute COVID-19 symptoms and identified key symptoms associated with persistent disease. We estimated incidence rates of persisting symptoms in the general population and among COVID-19 patients over time. Subsequently, we investigated which WHO-listed symptoms were particularly differential by comparing their frequency in COVID-19 cases vs. matched test-negative controls. Lastly, we compared persistent symptoms after first infections vs. reinfections.Our study shows that the proportion of COVID-19 cases affected by persistent post-acute COVID-19 symptoms declined over the study period. Risk for altered smell/taste was consistently higher in patients with COVID-19 vs test-negative controls. Persistent symptoms were more common after reinfection than following a first infection. More research is needed into the definition of long COVID, and the effect of interventions to minimise the risk and impact of persistent symptoms.
AB - Persistent symptoms following the acute phase of COVID-19 present a major burden to both the affected and the wider community. We conducted a cohort study including over 856,840 first COVID-19 cases, 72,422 re-infections and more than 3.1 million first negative-test controls from primary care electronic health records from Spain and the UK (Sept 2020 to Jan 2022 (UK)/March 2022 (Spain)). We characterised post-acute COVID-19 symptoms and identified key symptoms associated with persistent disease. We estimated incidence rates of persisting symptoms in the general population and among COVID-19 patients over time. Subsequently, we investigated which WHO-listed symptoms were particularly differential by comparing their frequency in COVID-19 cases vs. matched test-negative controls. Lastly, we compared persistent symptoms after first infections vs. reinfections.Our study shows that the proportion of COVID-19 cases affected by persistent post-acute COVID-19 symptoms declined over the study period. Risk for altered smell/taste was consistently higher in patients with COVID-19 vs test-negative controls. Persistent symptoms were more common after reinfection than following a first infection. More research is needed into the definition of long COVID, and the effect of interventions to minimise the risk and impact of persistent symptoms.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176940581&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-023-42726-0
DO - 10.1038/s41467-023-42726-0
M3 - Article
C2 - 37978296
AN - SCOPUS:85176940581
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 14
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 7449
ER -