Persistent COVID-19 symptoms in a community study of 606,434 people in England
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Long COVID remains a broadly defined syndrome, with estimates of prevalence and duration varying widely. We use data from rounds 3–5 of the REACT-2 study (n=508,707; September 2020 – February 2021), a representative community survey of adults in England, and replication data from round 6 (n=97,717; May 2021) to estimate the prevalence and identify predictors of persistent symptoms lasting 12 weeks or more; and unsupervised learning to cluster individuals by reported symptoms. At 12 weeks in rounds 3–5, 37.7% experienced at least one symptom, falling to 21.6% in round 6. Female sex, increasing age, obesity, smoking, vaping, hospitalisation with COVID-19, deprivation, and being a healthcare worker are associated with higher probability of persistent symptoms in rounds 3–5, and Asian ethnicity with lower probability. Clustering analysis identifies a subset of participants with predominantly respiratory symptoms. Managing the long-term sequelae of COVID-19 will remain a major challenge for affected individuals and their families and for health services.
Date Issued
2022-04-12
Date Acceptance
2022-03-16
Citation
Nature Communications, 2022, 13 (1957)
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
13
Issue
1957
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Sponsor
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust- BRC Funding
The Huo Family Foundation UK Limited
National Institute for Health Research
Department of Health
Cancer Research UK
Commission of the European Communities
National Institute for Health Research
Grant Number
RDF03
COVID 19 RESPONSE
COV-LT-0040
n/a
‘Mechanomics’ PRC project grant 22184
874627
RP-2016-07-012
Subjects
Science & Technology
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Science & Technology - Other Topics
Adult
COVID-19
England
Female
Humans
SARS-CoV-2
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
NCOMMS-21-26774C