Scientific reports: Prevalence of long COVID complaints in persons with and without COVID-19, 2023 - Magnusson, Flottorp et al

Prevalence of long COVID complaints in persons with and without COVID-19

Abstract
We studied the prevalence and patterns of typical long COVID complaints in ~ 2.3 million individuals aged 18–70 years with and without confirmed COVID-19 in a Nation-wide population-based prospective cohort study in Norway.

Our main outcome measures were the period prevalence of single-occurring or different combinations of complaints based on medical records: (1) Pulmonary (dyspnea and/or cough), (2) Neurological (concentration problems, memory loss), and/or (3) General complaints (fatigue). In persons testing positive (n = 75 979), 64 (95% confidence interval: 54 to 73) and 122 (111 to 113) more persons per 10 000 persons had pulmonary complaints 5–6 months after the test compared to 10 000 persons testing negative (n = 1 167 582) or untested (n = 1 084 578), respectively.

The corresponding difference in prevalence of general complaints (fatigue) was 181 (168 to 195) and 224 (211 to 238) per 10 000, and of neurological complaints 5 (2 to 8) and 9 (6–13) per 10 000. Overlap between complaints was rare. Long COVID complaints were only slightly more prevalent in persons with than without confirmed COVID-19.

Still, long COVID may pose a substantial burden to healthcare systems in the future given the lasting high incidence of symptomatic COVID-19 in both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-32636-y

 

Tweet from one of the authors, Karin Magnusson:

In 2.3 million Norwegians, we find that common long COVID complaints (doctor-reported) are only slightly more prevalent in individuals with vs without COVID-19. Still, the burden of long COVID is likely high, both on individuals and on healthcare systems.

 

Oh, so they ARE mass producing these studies now.

 

I think the overlap analysis is interesting, if this is statistically sound (I'm not confident in my capacity to assess) then it shows that the pulmonary elements of PASC are easily distinguishable from the plethora of other symptoms, which other studies seemed to have difficulty discriminating. This is significant in a disease which in its acute phase is a respiratory illness.

Fig 2. and extract:
"The small overlap and higher prevalence of complaints in persons testing positive than negative and in untested were visualized in proportional Venn-diagrams (Fig. 2). There were no signs of an increasing overlap over time, and the largest overlap was observed at 2 months for persons testing positive having pulmonary and general complaints (Fig. 2). This overlap was visually lower at 6 months (Fig. 2).

Proportions and intersections of complaints in the population in the group testing positive, the group testing negative and the untested group at baseline, 2, 4 and 6 months follow-up."

 

"Nature: Prevalence of long COVID complaints in persons with and without COVID-19, 2023 - Magnusson, Flottorp et al"

The journal it is actually published in is Scientific Reports, not actually Nature itself.

 

thank you! will correct.

 

These seems to be the main findings:

So the prevalence of general symptoms at 6 months was around 150-175 for those who were untested or tested negative while it was around 300 per 10.000 for those who tested positive. This is around 1.5% and 3% which are remarkably low figures.

The big problem with Long Covid definitions has been that they are so vague that it is hard to differentiate from the high baseline rate of fatigue and other symptoms in general population. This study, on the other hand, found remarkably low rates which probably suggests a problem with the diagnostic codes they rely on.

 

I also noticed this:

"Among persons testing positive, 40 (0.05%) died ... Among persons testing negative 676 (0.06%) died..."
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So there was no increase in mortality in the Sars-Cov-2 positive group even though the testing period was quite early in the pandemic (August 2020 to August 2021).

 

Given that it already has, this is weird. The costs are already enormous, thanks to deniers and systemic failure preventing the development of expertise and effective treatments. And also, is burden to healthcare the only concern? Morbidity is simply entirely irrelevant? Obviously not. Any disease that doesn't have any treatments is unlikely to pose a burden on healthcare systems, regardless of its nature or impact.

This is explicitly encouraging to be negligent in order to cut costs: as long as we're not bothered, we're not bothered.

This is a very superficial study, using a known distorted source of data. One of the main authors has made many disparaging comments showing a total lack of equipoise. The intensity of consent manufacturing in medicine is truly absurd. This study is as biased as a tobacco company reporting no connection between smoking and diseases.

 

Thanks. Could you explain this a bit because I would think that this was rather in the beginning of the pandemic when not everyone got vaccinated and the death toll in other countries was quite high. How come the situation was different and could this have also affected the number of long covid cases?

 

Very interesting the differences from other countries.

 

I see how this would result in fewer covid cases and a lower absolute number of deaths due to covid but not the lack of difference in mortality rate between those who had and those who did not have covid-19.

 

So this is a register study, based on data from august 2020 to august 2021.

Are these data valid at all?

That early in the pandemic there wasn’t acess to testing for the general public. Testing was very restricted, and you were just told to assume you had covid if symptoms arised.

Also we know there is a huge problem with false negative tests.

And add to that - you were asked to not go to the doctor unless it was really necessery, to not circulate virus.

People suffering new symptoms, but still able to keep up a job with doing less of everything else, would be unlikly to go to their doctor and getting symptoms registered.

Also, as we know, after beeing sick with a virus infection you would expect lingering symptoms for a while. It often takes some time for people to realize what they are experiencing is out of the ordinary, and go to their doctor. Especially during a pandemic, when people of all sorts where avoiding the doctors office if at all possible.

I would suspect there are way more long covid cases from early pandemic in Norway then this register study picks up.

And we can’t really be sure there are not long covid cases in both the negative test and the untested group.

 

Here is one of several articles from 2020, about doctors/GP not getting patients into their office.

Some down to 0 a day, the doctor interviewed down from 20 to just 3-4 a day.

https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/n...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp


I would claim register data from the first year of the pandemic really isn’t telling us much.