Fatigue, headache most common long COVID symptoms
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Fatigue and headache were the most common symptoms reported by people an average of 4 months after COVID-19 infection, according to research in Brain, Behavior, & Immunity.
Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, also called long COVID, are lingering symptoms some individuals experience following COVID-19 illness. To examine the severity and longevity of neurological concerns associated with COVID-19, Elizabeth K. Rutkowski, MD, MS, a neurologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and colleagues conducted a single-center, prospective, closed-cohort study of adult patients in Georgia who tested positive for COVID-19.
“There are a lot of symptoms that we did not know early on in the pandemic what to make of them, but now it’s clear there is a long COVID syndrome and that a lot of people are affected,” Rutkowski said in a university release.
Researchers enrolled two groups of participants — the CONGA cohort, which included patients who were at least 4 weeks from confirmed infection or 4 weeks after hospital discharge; and the control cohort, which excluded individuals who tested positive for COVID-19. Researchers aimed to evaluate participants annually for 5 years after their baseline visit.
At the time of the analysis, 200 participants (mean age, 44.6 years; 64.5% women) had been included for assessment. Nearly 40% of participants were Black, and 14 patients (7%) were hospitalized for COVID-19 complications. The average time to first research visit was 125 days after testing positive for COVID-19.
According to results, at least one neurological symptom was self-reported in 160 patients (80%) assessed. The most commonly reported symptom was fatigue (137 patients, 68.5%), followed by headache (133, 66.5%), a change in smell (109, 54.5%), a change in taste (108, 54%) and confusion (42, 21%).
“Our results support the growing evidence that there are chronic neuropsychiatric symptoms following COVID-19 infections,” Rutkowski and colleagues wrote. “Our results suggest that self-reported neurologic symptoms do not appear to correlate with associated quantitative dysfunction, emphasizing the importance of quantitative measurements in the complete assessment of deficit.”
Reference:
Fatigue, headache among top lingering symptoms months after COVID. https://jagwire.augusta.edu/fatigue-headache-among-top-lingering-symptoms-months-after-covid/. Published Aug. 8, 2022. Accessed Aug. 9, 2022.