People with Covid-like symptoms took almost a year before feeling like themselves again, researchers say
Researchers at UCLA found that 20 percent of patients with those symptoms continued experiencing suboptimal quality of life for nearly a year after infection. Whereas, physical well-being returned after only three months.
"We have newly recognized the difference in recovery with respect to mental vs. physical well-being after a COVID infection," Lauren Wisk, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, said in a statement.
"The findings showed that health care professionals need to pay more attention to their patients' mental well-being after a Covid infection and provide more resources that will help improve their mental health, in addition to their physical health,' she added.
Wisk was one of the lead authors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded study that was published Tuesday in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The study compared people who sought treatment for Covid-like symptoms. Of those, 75 percent tested positive for the virus. The rest were negative.
Of the 4,700 participants who experienced the symptoms between mid-December 2020 and late August 2022, the people who were positive for Covid were statistically likelier to return to optimal health-related quality-of-life than their Covid-negative counterparts in the year following the infection.
The authors said the findings suggest that health authorities may have previously underestimated the long-term effects of non-Covid infections on a patient's well-being.
To reach these conclusions, researchers analyzed responses from nearly 1,100 Covid-positive patients and 317 Covid-negative negative patients, assessing aspects including physical function, anxiety, depression, fatigue, social participation, sleep disturbance, pain interference and cognitive function.
They found that approximately one in five of those who were part of the study remained in poor overall quality of life, with a high likelihood of self-reporting long Covid for up to a year after initial infection.
'In this large, geographically diverse study of individuals with 12 months of follow-up after Covid-19-like illness, a substantial proportion of participants continued to report poor [overall quality of life], whether or not the inciting acute symptoms were due to SARS-CoV-2 or another illness,' they said.
Mental well-being recovered gradually, with significant improvements manifesting between six and nine months after infection, researchers found.
The authors said further research was needed, noting that it remains unclear which conditions the symptomatic Covid-negative patients were suffering from and that Covid tests can yield both false-positive and false-negative results. The common cold, allergies, flu and Covid share many similar symptoms.
"Future research should focus on how to improve the treatment models of care for patients who continue to experience Covid-19 symptoms and their impact on patients' quality of life, especially as one in five patients may continue to suffer over a year after their initial infection, which likely reflects long Covid," Wisk said.
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