Abstract:
The infection with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) frequently causes a broad range of long-lasting symptoms. This condition, termed long-COVID, influences everyday life of affected individuals in many ways and causes a high economic burden. There is urgent need to obtain better understanding of the risk factors that contribute to the development of long-COVID.
Aim of this study was to investigate the long-COVID rate of supposedly healthy adults during different phases of the pandemic. Therefore, 71,670 blood donations were screened for SARS-CoV-2 total anti-N antibodies between 5 th June 2020 and 30 th November 2022. 351 individuals could be recruited for our study to monitor long-COVID symptoms and their duration. Despite immense worldwide efforts to stop virus dissemination, our data reveal a constantly rising SARS-CoV-2 anti-N seroprevalence rate in Salzburg, Austria, peaking at 84.9% in October 2022.
In addition, our data demonstrate varying rates of long-COVID in the course of the pandemic. While long-COVID rates were about 20% for the time span between March 2020 and August 2021, long-COVID was reported by 12% for infections from September 2021 to August 2022. This could be attributed to different virus variants, but also to increasing vaccination rates. We further found that long-COVID symptoms decline over time: while 18% of our study participants described persisting symptoms 3 months after the seropositive blood donation, 14% reported persisting symptoms 9 months afterwards and 3% after 18 months.
In conclusion, our data reveal that long-COVID symptoms may persist for more than a year after a SARS-CoV-2 infection and that long-COVID rates are varying in the course of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Source: Nunhofer, et al. Long-COVID Rates Vary Throughout the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic. Journal of Infectious Diseases & Therapy. Volume 11 • Issue 01 • 1000520. ISSN: 2332-0877. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandra-Laner-Plamberger/publication/368293143_Long-COVID_Rates_Vary_Throughout_the_SARS-CoV-2_Pandemic/links/63e0dd9062d2a24f920a4d24/Long-COVID-Rates-Vary-Throughout-the-SARS-CoV-2-Pandemic.pdf (Full text)