February 15, 2023: After reading thousands of post-COVID-19 symptoms, researchers have found that getting vaccinated can potentially be the threat of long-term COVID.
The new study, which looked at patients 3 months after their COVID-19 infections in the pre-Delta, Delta, and Omicron variants, saw for the first time that prolonged COVID symptoms were less unusual in the pre-Delta era than in the Delta and Omicron eras. But those differences between variants have narrowed when researchers adjusted vaccination status, suggesting that the vaccine may play a key role in reducing the long-term threat of COVID and reducing the severity of its symptoms.
Another important point of the study, conducted by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and the University of California, San Francisco and published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, is the large number of post-COVID-19 people who reported severe fatigue.
“Mild fatigue is very different from severe life-affecting fatigue,” lead writer Michael Gottlieb, MD, said at a news conference Wednesday. “One in eight people affected by COVID suffered intense and prolonged fatigue at 3 months. . . . This is a testament to the effect we are seeing as a society.
The study included 2402 COVID-positive and 821 COVID-negative people, adding 463 who fall into the pre-Delta category, 1198 Delta and 741 Omicron.
The authors did not assess the severity of the patients’ initial COVID infections compared to their widespread symptoms, but Gottlieb told reporters that lately the organization is conducting additional research to see if there are parallels between the two.
Gottlieb said the study team continues to see patients beyond the 3-month mark, to see what their symptom pathways look like. Symptoms at 3 months can develop into severe symptoms at 6 months, and others with severe symptoms at 3 months may be older than 6 months.
All of those lingering questions, plus how reinfection plays into prolonged COVID, will be the subject of long-term studies through Gottlieb’s team.
“We want to better perceive long COVID and we want to delineate it better,” Gottlieb said. “Long COVID is not a singular concept, there are other phenotypes and versions of it. As researchers, public fitness leaders, and as a society, we want to better perceive what other people are experiencing. “
SOURCES:
Clinical infectious diseases: “Severe fatigue and persistent symptoms 3 months after SARS-CoV-2 infections, the pre-delta, delta, and Omicron periods: a prospective multicenter cohort study. “
Press conference, Infectious Diseases Society of America, February 15, 2023.
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