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The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is associated with heterogeneous symptoms at its acute phase but also at post-acute phase. Current evidence suggests that 50% of survivors experience post-COVID symptoms the following months after the acute infection [1,2]. The presence of post-COVID symptoms is associated with worse quality of life [3]. In fact, up to 50 diffferent post-COVID symptoms have been described, and patients usually exhibit more than one symptom [4]. Similarly, the number of symptoms at onset is also heterogeneous, and patients can exhibit several number of symptoms. It has been found that a higher number of onset symptoms at the acute phase (high viral load) is associated with a greater number of post-COVID symptoms [5]. Previous studies focussing on post-COVID symptoms did not use machine learning analysis. Here we present the use of a network analysis for investigating the associations between COVID-19 onset symptoms at hospital admission and the presence of post-COVID symptoms at a long-term follow-up in previously hospitalised COVID-19 survivors recruited from different hospitals.
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Source: Fernández-de-Las-Peñas C, Varol U, Fuensalida-Novo S, Plaza-Canteli S, Valera-Calero JA. Is the number of long-term post-COVID symptoms relevant in hospitalized COVID-19 survivors? Eur J Intern Med. 2022 Jun;100:133-136. doi: 10.1016/j.ejim.2022.02.013. Epub 2022 Feb 14. PMID: 35181183; PMCID: PMC8841158. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8841158/ (Full text)