Long COVID burden and risk factors in 10 UK longitudinal studies and electronic health records, 2022, Thompson et al

Abstract

The frequency of, and risk factors for, long COVID are unclear among community-based individuals with a history of COVID-19. To elucidate the burden and possible causes of long COVID in the community, we coordinated analyses of survey data from 6907 individuals with self-reported COVID-19 from 10 UK longitudinal study (LS) samples and 1.1 million individuals with COVID-19 diagnostic codes in electronic healthcare records (EHR) collected by spring 2021. Proportions of presumed COVID-19 cases in LS reporting any symptoms for 12+ weeks ranged from 7.8% and 17% (with 1.2 to 4.8% reporting debilitating symptoms). Increasing age, female sex, white ethnicity, poor pre-pandemic general and mental health, overweight/obesity, and asthma were associated with prolonged symptoms in both LS and EHR data, but findings for other factors, such as cardio-metabolic parameters, were inconclusive.

Open access, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30836-0

 

The problem is that few meaningful factors can actually be gleaned from medical records. Combined with any and all prolonged symptoms being considered long-covid, (rather than distinct and well-defined syndromes) studies like this tell us very little.

 

Sometimes I wish that gender wasn't collected about certain types of trials and research papers. I have a strong suspicion that gender is used to decide whether something is important or not. If something is mostly relevant to females then it isn't deemed important or urgent.

 

I think this is a useful study as it gives us an idea of the ratio of people self-reporting Long Covid (8-17% for any symptom 12+ weeks, 1.2–4.8% for limiting day-to-day function 12+ weeks) versus the number of people with a LC diagnosis in the health records (0.4%), at least in the UK.