One in three COVID patients develop long COVID
Patients with commercial insurance were twice as likely to develop long COVID than Medicaid patients, according to research.
While debate continues about what, exactly, “long COVID” means, new research from the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests that about one-third of all people treated for coronavirus develop what is now known as Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (or PASC).
“Long COVID” is the term generally used to describe COVID-19 symptoms that linger for 60 days or longer after infection or hospitalization. UCLA researchers studied 1,038 COVID-19 patients, tracking their progress between April 2020 and February 2021. Of those, 309 patients (29.8%) developed long COVID with symptoms continuing past 60 or 90 days, based on patient questionnaire responses. The most persistent symptoms were fatigue (30%) and shortness of breath (15%) in hospitalized patients and loss of smell (16%) in outpatients.
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People with a history of hospitalization, diabetes, and higher body mass index were most likely to develop long COVID, according to researchers. Additionally, those patients covered by Medicaid (vs. commercial health insurance) or who had undergone an organ transplant were less likely to develop long COVID. Ethnicity, older age, and socioeconomic status were not associated with PASC — even though those factors have been linked to greater risk of death from COVID-19.
The study was published this month in the peer-reviewed Journal of General Internal Medicine.
“This study illustrates the need to follow diverse patient populations longitudinally to understand the long COVID disease trajectory and evaluate how individual factors such as pre-existing comorbidities, sociodemographic factors, vaccination status, and virus variant type affect type and persistence of long COVID symptoms,” Sun Yoo, health sciences assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a statement. “Studying outcomes in a single health system can minimize variation in quality of medical care.”
Yoo also noted that the study raises the question of why patients with commercial insurance were twice as likely to develop long COVID than Medicaid patients.
“Because persistent symptoms can be subjective in nature, we need better tools to accurately diagnose long COVID and to differentiate it from exacerbations of other emerging or chronic conditions,” she continued. “Finally, we need to ensure equitable access to outpatient long COVID care.”
In November 2021, researchers at the University of Michigan reviewed 40 studies from 17 countries that evaluated 886,000 patients and tracked their long COVID experiences — defined as symptoms persisting for four or more weeks after infection. As WebMD.com reported, “the research team found that global prevalence of long COVID was about 43%. Among patients who needed hospitalization, the prevalence increased to 57%. The rate was 49% among women and 37% among men.”
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