“The burden of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms in a multinational network cohort analysis”

Kristin Kostka, Elena Roel, Nhung T.H. Trinh, Núria Mercadé-Besora, Antonella Delmestri, Lourdes Mateu, Roger Paredes, Talita Duarte-Salles, Daniel Prieto-Alhambra*, Martí Català, Annika M. Jödicke

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)
14 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7449
Number of pages10
JournalNature Communications
Volume14
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Nov 2023

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© 2023, The Author(s).

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