Post-COVID-19 condition is not only a question of persistent symptoms: structured screening including health-related quality of life reveals two separate clusters of post-COVID.
Infection
; 2022 Jul 22.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2260728
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE:
Some patients experience long-term sequelae after infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, despite a present post-COVID condition, defined as "any symptom lasting longer than 12 weeks," only a subset of patients search for medical help and therapy.METHOD:
We invited all adults with a positive real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 between March 2020 and September 2021 (n = 4091) in the city of Jena to answer a standardized questionnaire including demographic information, the course of the acute infection and current health status. K-means-clustering of quality of life (QoL) was used to explore post-COVID subgroups.RESULTS:
A total of 909 participants at a median interval of 367 (IQR 291/403) days after acute infection were included in the analysis. Of those, 643 (70.7%) complained of having experienced persistent symptoms at the time of the survey. Cluster analysis based on QoL revealed two subgroups of people with persistent post-COVID symptoms. Whereas 189/643 participants (29.4%) showed markedly diminished QoL, normal QoL was detected in 454/643 individuals (70.6%).CONCLUSION:
Despite persistent symptoms being reported by nearly three quarters of participants, only one-third of these described a significant reduction in QoL (cluster 1), whereas the other two-thirds reported a near-normal QoL (cluster 2), thus indicating a differentiation between "post-COVID disease" and "post-COVID condition". The prevalence of clinically relevant post-COVID disease was at least 20.7%. Health policies should focus on this subset.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Diagnostic study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
Topics:
Long Covid
Language:
English
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S15010-022-01886-9
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