In a recent study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers analyzed data from approximately 500,000 Americans to examine the effects of long COVID across the country. Their findings reveal that the prevalence of long COVID varies by state: Hawaii has the lowest, at 11%, and West Virginia has the highest, at 18%. Long COVID varies by ethnicity, with white Americans more likely to suffer from the disease than blacks and Asians. Having long COVID at any time correlates strongly with adverse intellectual fitness outcomes, while short COVID did not, which curiously resulted in greater well-being compared to no COVID. Physical well-being showed a similar trend, with COVID patients and long-term survivors reporting difficulties with movement. Vaccination was found to have positive effects on outcomes. in both long and short COVID cohorts.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected more than 771 million people and led to nearly 7 million deaths since its outbreak in December 2019. This makes it one of the most serious pandemics in human history. Sadly, many of the more than 760 million survivors suffered lingering COVID-19-like symptoms long after the illness, a condition colloquially known as “long COVID. “
The most recent global estimates put the number at more than 65 million cases of long COVID, however, given the novelty and lack of public awareness of the disease, this figure is at best an underestimate. Research has shown that about 43% of all COVID-19 patients experience one or more long-lasting symptoms. Although the disease remains clinically undefined and vague, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines it as the patience or progression of symptoms 3 months after the initial diagnosis of COVID-19, lasting two months or more.
Long COVID poses serious harm to human wellbeing (quality of life) and socio-economic loss: Studies in the UK and Europe have found that long COVID symptoms can persist for two years or more. Patients suffering from this condition are particularly less likely to be in paid work, leading to deficits in UK and European labour markets.
Although long COVID is a new and poorly understood phenomenon, in part due to the lack of a commonly accepted definition, a framework of developing studies has known more than two hundred symptoms related to the disease. Alarmingly, most long COVID patients report dozens of symptoms in organ systems. “Several studies have reported physical and cognitive impairments, but their occurrence and prevalence remain unknown.
In the study provided, the researchers first review the recently available literature on long COVID, focusing on physical and cognitive impairments reported as a result of the illness. They then use a massive, publicly available dataset from the U. S. government. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (CDC) conducted a survey of the prevalence of long COVID across the country.
Data were received from the United Nations Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS). The HPS is an online survey designed to collect data on the effects of COVID-19 on the lives of Americans. Previous studies summarized knowledge from HPS scans 1 to 44. Therefore, the supply study used data from scans 46 to 53 aggregating records from June 2022 to January 2023. The length of the pattern included in this study is 461,550.
Statistical analyses were mainly descriptive, using the user weight variable (PWEIGHT) for individual weighting as opposed to nonresponse bias. An unweighted knowledge regression investigation was used to unload correlations between 1. Long COVID at any time, 2. persistence of COVID at the time of the survey, and 3. Long COVID with significant symptoms. The 3 correlations were coded as binary variables (0,1). Finally, least squares (MCO) were used to download a composite measure of the negative effects of COVID-19 on the U. S. population.
Analyses of the study reveal that 46. 7% of all respondents had a COVID-19 infection, of which 14. 4% reported long COVID (symptoms that lasted longer than 3 months). Of the 66,349 respondents who reported long COVID, 29,839 reported persistent symptoms at the time of survey knowledge collection. Of all COVID-19 survivors, 13. 3% reported experiencing “severe symptoms” of long COVID. Prevalence is particularly higher for those with long COVID (31%) than for those with long COVID (7%).
Alarmingly, 6. 9% of participants who reported long COVID reported weakness in their overall activities. The prevalence of long COVID in the U. S. The U. S. education rate varies by state, age, gender, ethnicity/race, and school status. Hawaii reported the lowest incidence at 11%, while West Virginia reported the highest level at 18%. Middle-aged respondents (47-63 years old) were at higher risk of contracting long COVID than other age groups. Women were particularly more vulnerable to long COVID than men. -Lived prevalence of COVID than Black and Asian Americans.
Education and vaccination particularly reduced the likelihood of contracting long COVID, corroborating previous research. Linear regression analyses of the effects of COVID-19 revealed severe negative effects on the physical and intellectual well-being of participants who reported long COVID. Physical consequences included loss of mobility and difficulty. bathing and dressing. Mental effects included memory loss, reduced cognitive ability, and intellectual fitness problems such as anxiety and depression. Conversely, participants who survived a short generation of COVID reported an improvement in their well-being, even more so than respondents who never acquired a COVID-19 infection.
The study provided examines the prevalence and effects of long COVID in a cohort representative of the U. S. population. U. S. Analyses of nearly a portion of a million Americans have found that about 14% of them suffer from the lingering effects of the disease. , sex (highest risk in females), age (highest risk in middle age), educational prestige (inversely proportional), race/ethnicity (highest risk in whites), and vaccination prestige (lower risk of long COVID after vaccination).
Written by
Hugo Francisco de Souza is a science publisher founded in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Her educational passions are biogeography, evolutionary biology, and herpetology. He is lately doing his PhD at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, where he is reading about the origins, dispersal and speciation of snakes related to wetlands. Hugo has received, among others, the DST-INSPIRE scholarship for his doctoral studies and the Gold Medal of the University of Pondicherry for his educational excellence and his master’s degree. His studies have been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, adding PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and Systematic Biology. When he’s not running or writing, Hugo consumes gigantic amounts of anime and manga. He composes and makes music on his bass, hits trails in his ATV, plays video games (he prefers the term “games”), or tinkers with all things technological.
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