Abstract:
Medical research is progressing to clarify the full spectrum of sub-acute and long-term effects of the post-COVID-19 syndrome. However, most manuscripts published to date only analyze the effects of post-COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital, which may induce significant bias. Here, we propose a pioneering study to analyze the single and multiple associations between post-COVID-19 characteristics with up to 6-months of follow-up in hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The cohort study was conducted from May to October 2020 at the University Hospital Virgen de la Nieves, the leading hospital assigned for patients with COVID-19 in Granada, Spain.
A total of 372 and 217 patients-with 217 and 207 included in the first and second follow-up visits-were referred 2 and 6 months after diagnosing COVID-19, respectively. We find out that post-COVID-19 clinical and mental health impairment symptoms are correlated with patient gender. Logistic adjustments showed strong statistically robust single and multiple associations of demographic, clinical, mental health, X-ray, laboratory indices, and pulmonary function variables. The functional lung tests are good predictors of chest CT imaging abnormalities in elderly patients. Bilateral lung involvement, subpleural reticulum, ground-glass opacity, peripheral lung lesions, and bronchiectasis were the most common findings of the high-resolution computed tomography images. Non-hospitalized patients suffer more severe thromboembolic events and fatigue than those hospitalized.
Source: Jiménez-Rodríguez BM, Gutiérrez-Fernández J, Ramos-Urbina EM, Romero-Ortiz AD, García-Flores PI, Santiago-Puertas MI, Martín-López MJ, López-Milena G, Fabregas R, Morales-García C. On the single and multiple associations of COVID-19 post-acute sequelae: 6-month prospective cohort study. Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 1;12(1):3402. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-07433-8. PMID: 35233062; PMCID: PMC8888754. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8888754/ (Full text)