Symptoms of persistent COVID can last up to two years

The COVICAT study, conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) in collaboration with the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), concludes that 23% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 had persistent COVID between 2021 and 2023. In 56% of these, symptoms lasted up to two years. Persistent COVID is the manifestation of COVID symptoms (respiratory, neurological, digestive, fatigue…) for at least three months after overcoming the infection.

COVICAT drew on data from a cohort of nearly 3,000 adults who were followed up between 2020 and 2023. This is a population-based cohort, beyond the clinical context in which most studies on persistent COVID have been conducted. With this study they wanted to see the impact of the disease on the health of the Catalan population.

The research team has classified persistent COVID into three different categories according to symptoms – neuromuscular, respiratory or severe multi-organ. In addition, it has also been able to determine risk and protective factors.

The former include being female, having had severe COVID and having a chronic disease, especially asthma, prior to infection. Marianna Karachaliou, co-author of the study adds, ‘We observed that people with obesity and high levels of IgG antibodies before vaccination were also more susceptible to developing the disease”.

In contrast, among the protective factors, the researchers found being vaccinated and leading a healthy lifestyle, including exercising and sleeping 6 to 8 hours. In addition, they also found that the Omicron variant was less likely to cause persistent COVID.

According to Judith Garcia-Aymerich, last author of the paper, ‘establishing collaborations with other countries will be key to understanding whether these findings can be extrapolated to other populations’.

Indeed, five years after the outbreak of the pandemic, much remains to be done to understand the disease.