ABSTRACT
The long-term risk of herpes zoster (HZ) after recovery from a SARS-CoV-2 infection is unclear. This retrospective cohort study assessed the risk of HZ in patients following a COVID-19 diagnosis. This retrospective, propensity score-matched cohort study was based on the multi-institutional research network TriNetX. The risk of incident HZ in patients with COVID-19 was compared with that of those not infected with SARS-CoV-2 during a 1-year follow-up period. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of HZ and its subtypes were calculated. This study identified 1 221 343 patients with and without COVID-19 diagnoses with matched baseline characteristics. During the 1-year follow-up period, patients with COVID-19 had a higher risk of HZ compared with those without COVID-19 (HR: 1.59; 95% CI: 1.49-1.69). In addition, compared with the control group patients, those with COVID-19 had a higher risk of HZ ophthalmicus (HR: 1.31; 95% CI: 1.01-1.71), disseminated zoster (HR: 2.80; 95% CI: 1.37-5.74), zoster with other complications (HR: 1.46; 95% CI: 1.18-1.79), and zoster without complications (HR: 1.66; 95% CI: 1.55-1.77). Kaplan-Meier curve analysis (log-rank p < 0.05) results indicated that the risk of HZ remained significantly higher in patients with COVID-19 compared with those without COVID-19. Finally, the higher risk of HZ in the COVID-19 cohort compared with that in the non-COVID-19 cohort remained consistent across subgroup analyses regardless of vaccine status, age, or sex. The risk of HZ within a 12-month follow-up period was significantly higher in patients who had recovered from COVID-19 compared with that in the control group. This result highlights the importance of carefully monitoring HZ in this population and suggests the potential benefit of the HZ vaccine for patients with COVID-19.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus , Herpes Zoster Vaccine , Herpes Zoster , Humans , Retrospective Studies , Cohort Studies , COVID-19 Testing , Incidence , COVID-19/complications , COVID-19/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2 , Herpes Zoster/complications , Herpes Zoster/epidemiology , Herpesvirus 3, HumanABSTRACT
Sustained attention is essential for older adults to maintain an active lifestyle, and the deficiency of this function is often associated with health-related risks such as falling and frailty. The present study examined whether the well-established age-effect on reducing mind-wandering, the drift to internal thoughts that are seen to be detrimental to attentional control, could be replicated by using a robotic experimenter for older adults who are not as familiar with online technologies. A total of 28 younger and 22 older adults performed a Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) by answering thought probes regarding their attention states and providing confidence ratings for their own task performances. The indices from the modified SART suggested a well-documented conservative response strategy endorsed by older adults, which were represented by slower responses and increased omission errors. Moreover, the slower responses and increased omissions were found to be associated with less self-reported mind-wandering, thus showing consistency with their higher subjective ratings of attentional control. Overall, this study demonstrates the potential of constructing age-related cognitive profiles with attention evaluation instruction based on a social companion robot for older adults at home.