Long COVID patients can experience most of the same lingering negative effects on their physical, mental, and social well-being as those experienced by individuals who grow to be ailing with other, non-COVID illnesses, recent research suggests.

The findings, to be published December 1, 2022 within the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open, are based on a comparison of individuals known to have been infected with COVID-19 with individuals with similar symptoms who tested negative for COVID. The researchers found that 40% of the COVID-positive and 54% of the COVID-negative group reported moderate-to-severe residual symptoms three months after enrolling within the study.

Many diseases, including COVID, can result in symptoms negatively impacting one’s sense of well-being lasting months after initial infection, which is what we saw here. Because these changes look similar for COVID- and COVID+ participants, this means the experience of the pandemic itself, and related stress, could also be playing a job in slowing peoples’ recovery from any illness.”

Lauren Wisk, lead creator, assistant professor of medication within the division of general internal medicine and health services research on the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

The study included people each with acute COVID and without COVID (but sick with another illness) to look at the impact of COVID on one’s well-being, also compared with the final population, Wisk noted.

“We found that, so far as well-being is worried, COVID-positive and COVID-negative groups look more similar than different, but each still have worse well-being scores than the final population.”

The multisite study was conducted in English and Spanish under the umbrella of INSPIRE (Progressive Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections Registry), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded project.

Participating sites include the University of California, Los Angeles; Rush University Medical Center in Chicago; University of California, San Francisco; University of Washington in Seattle; Yale University; UTHealth Houston; the University of Texas Southwestern; and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

The study’s 1000 participants were 18 years of age or older who:

• Tested for COVID-19 throughout the previous 42 days of enrolling within the study with either positive or negative test results and no prior COVID-19 diagnosis;
• Had symptoms known to be related to COVID-19, comparable to cough, fever, headache or fatigue, on the time of testing;
• Had access to an internet-connected device, comparable to a smartphone, tablet, or computer, to finish online surveys; and
• Accomplished an initial survey on the time of enrollment within the study and a follow-up survey three months later that asked about their physical function, anxiety, depression, fatigue, social participation, sleep disturbance, pain interference, and cognitive function.

Of those participants, 722 (72%) were positive for COVID and 278 (28%) tested negative.

Overall, those that tested positive for COVID had self-reported physical and mental health symptoms three months after infection that were much like those that became ailing with other, non-COVID illnesses in the course of the pandemic. The COVID-positive group, nonetheless, experienced higher improvements of their social well-being than did the COVID-negative group.

The study could also be limited by the chance that a number of the sickest patients at highest risk for long COVID can have been unable or unwilling to participate; a scarcity of clarity about which conditions some symptomatic COVID-negative participants suffered from at enrollment, comparable to bacterial pneumonia or respiratory syncytial virus, making it difficult to find out in the event that they would have had kind of severe self-reported outcomes; the incontrovertible fact that participants were recruited from December 2020 through September 2021, making the findings potentially inapplicable to subsequent COVID variants; and that COVID-19 tests are sometimes inaccurate. Finally, participants’ well-being was evaluated at 3 months after their initial illness; many illnesses take time for recovery and comparing improvements in symptoms over an extended time period shall be essential for a meaningful understanding of long COVID.

Still, the findings highlight the importance of comparing COVID-positive and COVID-negative people to evaluate the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the population. “Most other studies on long COVID would not have such a control group”, said Dr. Joann Elmore, the paper’s co-senior creator and a professor of medication within the division of general internal medicine and health services research on the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“Researchers and doctors now have a greater understanding of well-being outcomes related to COVID-19 in consequence of this study,” said Elmore, who can be the principal investigator on the UCLA site. “The findings highlight the potential widespread impact of the pandemic on our overall health, including the lesser-tracked emotional, social, and mental points, alongside the highly recognized physical effects.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (75D30120C08008) funded this research.

Source:

University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences

Journal reference:

Wisk, L.E., et al. (2022) Association of initial SARS-CoV-2 test positivity with patient-reported well-being 3 months after a symptomatic illness. JAMA Network Open. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.44486.