Risk, determinants, and persistence of long-COVID in a population-based cohort study in Catalonia.

IF 7 1区医学 Q1 MEDICINE, GENERAL & INTERNAL

BMC Medicine Pub Date : 2025-03-14 DOI:10.1186/s12916-025-03974-7

Manolis Kogevinas, Marianna Karachaliou, Ana Espinosa, Susana Iraola-Guzmán, Gemma Castaño-Vinyals, Laura Delgado-Ortiz, Xavier Farré, Natàlia Blay, Neil Pearce, Magda Bosch de Basea, Eva Alonso Nogués, Carlota Dobaño, Gemma Moncunill, Rafael de Cid, Judith Garcia-Aymerich

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: Long-COVID has mostly been investigated in clinical settings. We aimed to assess the risk, subtypes, persistence, and determinants of long-COVID in a prospective population-based study of adults with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Catalonia.

Methods: We examined 2764 infected individuals from a population-based cohort (COVICAT) established before the pandemic and followed up three times across the pandemic (2020, 2021, 2023). We assessed immunoglobulin (Ig)G levels against SARS-CoV-2, clinical, vaccination, sociodemographic, and lifestyle factors. Long-COVID risk and subtypes were defined based on participant-reported symptoms and electronic health records. We identified a total of 647 long-COVID cases and compared them with 2117 infected individuals without the condition.

Results: Between 2021 and 2023, 23% of infected subjects developed long-COVID symptoms. In 56% of long-COVID cases in 2021, symptoms persisted for 2 years. Long-COVID presented clinically in three subtypes, mild neuromuscular, mild respiratory, and severe multi-organ. The latter was associated with persistent long-COVID. Risk was higher among females, participants under 50 years, of low socioeconomic status, severe COVID-19 infection, elevated pre-vaccination IgG levels, obesity, and prior chronic disease, particularly asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and mental health conditions. A lower risk was associated to pre-infection vaccination, infection after omicron became the dominant variant, higher physical activity levels, and sleeping 6-8 h. Vaccination during the 3 months post-infection was also protective against long-COVID.

Conclusions: Long-COVID persisted for up to 2 years in half of the cases, and risk was influenced by multiple factors.

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来源期刊

BMC Medicine 医学-医学：内科

CiteScore

13.10

自引率

1.10%

发文量

435

审稿时长

4-8 weeks

期刊介绍： BMC Medicine is an open access, transparent peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is the flagship journal of the BMC series and publishes outstanding and influential research in various areas including clinical practice, translational medicine, medical and health advances, public health, global health, policy, and general topics of interest to the biomedical and sociomedical professional communities. In addition to research articles, the journal also publishes stimulating debates, reviews, unique forum articles, and concise tutorials. All articles published in BMC Medicine are included in various databases such as Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS, CAS, Citebase, Current contents, DOAJ, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, Science Citation Index Expanded, OAIster, SCImago, Scopus, SOCOLAR, and Zetoc.