The more severe COVID-19 is, the more likely a person is to develop long COVID, according to a new study. A team from Karolinska Institutet published a study in The Lancet Regional Health—Europe on Friday detailing their findings.
The researchers looked at the prevalence of symptoms in people with COVID-19 and compared them to people without COVID-19. They evaluated data from 64,880 adults from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland who reported physical symptoms between April 2020 and August 2022.
Over 22,000 of the participants were diagnosed with COVID-19 during the period; nearly 10% of them were bedridden for at least seven days. The prevalence of chronic symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches, and low energy/fatigue was 37% higher in those who had had a COVID-19 compared to those who weren’t diagnosed with it.
The people who were bedridden had the most lingering symptoms for up to two years after they were diagnosed.
“Our results show the long-term health consequences of the pandemic and highlight the importance of monitoring physical symptoms for up to two years after diagnosis, especially in people who experienced severe COVID-19,” Emily Joyce, a doctoral student at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and one of the study’s first authors, said.
The results were generally similar among those who were vaccinated and those who weren’t, though most of the participants were fully or partially vaccinated.
Two other reports on long COVID were published this week:
- A second study out on Oct. 24 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases found there was no evidence of ongoing infection or brain damage in people who had lingering symptoms of COVID-19, or long COVID.
- Another study published Oct. 25 in BMC Infectious Diseases showed that people who got COVID-19 had more than double the risk of shortness of breath and memory loss longer than three months after they got the infection compared to people who didn’t have it.
