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Symptoms and risk factors for long COVID in non-hospitalized adults, 2022, Subramanian et al

Discussion in 'Long Covid research' started by Andy, Jul 25, 2022.

  1. Andy

    Andy Committee Member

    Messages:
    21,814
    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    Abstract

    Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is associated with a range of persistent symptoms impacting everyday functioning, known as post-COVID-19 condition or long COVID. We undertook a retrospective matched cohort study using a UK-based primary care database, Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum, to determine symptoms that are associated with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection beyond 12 weeks in non-hospitalized adults and the risk factors associated with developing persistent symptoms.

    We selected 486,149 adults with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and 1,944,580 propensity score-matched adults with no recorded evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Outcomes included 115 individual symptoms, as well as long COVID, defined as a composite outcome of 33 symptoms by the World Health Organization clinical case definition. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) for the outcomes. A total of 62 symptoms were significantly associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection after 12 weeks. The largest aHRs were for anosmia (aHR 6.49, 95% CI 5.02–8.39), hair loss (3.99, 3.63–4.39), sneezing (2.77, 1.40–5.50), ejaculation difficulty (2.63, 1.61–4.28) and reduced libido (2.36, 1.61–3.47). Among the cohort of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, risk factors for long COVID included female sex, belonging to an ethnic minority, socioeconomic deprivation, smoking, obesity and a wide range of comorbidities. The risk of developing long COVID was also found to be increased along a gradient of decreasing age. SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with a plethora of symptoms that are associated with a range of sociodemographic and clinical risk factors.

    Open access, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01909-w
     
    Hutan, Peter Trewhitt and ahimsa like this.
  2. LarsSG

    LarsSG Senior Member (Voting Rights)

    Messages:
    370
    These "pulling together data from medical records to try to characterize Long Covid" studies don't seem to be capturing Long Covid in any kind of useful way.

    This one concludes that exactly zero of nearly half a million people infected with Covid had "post exertional fatigue" and less than 0.5% had fatigue in general. Brain fog was only found in 0.06%. This depends so much on what gets recorded in people's charts that the results don't really tell us anything. The outcomes they highlight as significantly associated with Covid infection are supposedly found in just a tiny fraction of those infected (anosmia 0.04%, reduced libido 0.01% (42 people)). If you're missing most of the fatigue, for example, you're really just measuring what's associated with having fatigue recorded in your chart, not what's associated with actual fatigue.
     
    MEMarge, cfsandmore, Trish and 6 others like this.

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