Three factors may help predict long COVID

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-03-11 11:56

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PHOTO: Brittany Colette/Unsplash

What do the symptoms of 'long COVID' actually look like and are there any early signs an infected person might be at risk? More than 4,000 people infected with the coronavirus reported their symptoms to researchers through an app, with more than one in 10 saying their symptoms lasted a month or longer. Common symptoms reported were fatigue, headache, and loss of smell. Furthermore, the researchers say they were able to predict how long someone’s symptoms would last based on the number of symptoms a patient had in the first week, their age, and their sex. The study team says their predictive model could be used to identify groups at risk for long COVID.

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From: Springer Nature

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Research Springer Nature, Web page

Journal/
conference: Nature Medicine

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: King’s College London, UK

Funder: Zoe Global provided in-kind support for all aspects of building, running and supporting the app and service to all users worldwide. Support for this study was provided by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)-funded Biomedical Research Centre based at Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) NHS Foundation Trust. This work was supported by the UK Research and Innovation London Medical Imaging & Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value-Based Healthcare. Investigators also received support from the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (MRC), British Heart Foundation (BHF), Alzheimer’s Society, European Union, NIHR, COVID-19 Driver Relief Fund (CDRF) and the NIHR-funded BioResource, Clinical Research Facility and Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) based at GSTT NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with KCL. S.O. was supported by the French government, through the 3IA Côte d’Azur Investments in the Future project managed by the National Research Agency (ANR) with the reference number ANR-19-P3IA-0002. A.T.C. was supported by a Stuart and Suzanne Steele MGH Research Scholar Award. C.M. was funded by the Chronic Disease Research Foundation and by the MRC AimHy project grant. L.H.N., D.A.D., A.D.J. and A.T.C. were supported by the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) and M. Schwartz and L. Schwartz. J.M. was partially supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 program (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015-703787). The work performed on the Swedish study was supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (LUDC-IRC 15-0067).

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