Long COVID patients can experience many of the same lingering negative effects on their physical, mental, and social well-being as those experienced by people who become ill with other, non-COVID illnesses, new research suggests.
The findings, to be published December 1, 2022 in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open, are based on a comparison of people known to have been infected with COVID-19 with individuals with similar symptoms who tested negative for COVID. The researchers found that 40% of the COVID-positive and 54% of the COVID-negative group reported moderate-to-severe residual symptoms three months after enrolling in the study.
“Many diseases, including COVID, can lead to symptoms negatively impacting one’s sense of well-being lasting months after initial infection, which is what we saw here,” said lead author Lauren Wisk, assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Because these changes look similar for COVID- and COVID+ participants, this suggests the experience of the pandemic itself, and related stress, may be playing a role in slowing peoples’ recovery from any illness.”
The study included people both with acute COVID and without COVID (but sick with some other illness) to examine the impact of COVID on one’s well-being, also compared with the general population, Wisk noted.
“We found that, as far as well-being is concerned, COVID-positive and COVID-negative groups look more similar than different, but both still have worse well-being scores than the general population.”
The multisite study was conducted in English and Spanish under the umbrella of INSPIRE (Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections Registry), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded project.
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