American adults who survived COVID-19 infection are more likely than people who were not infected with COVID-19 to develop incident conditions attributable to the virus.
Patients who were exposed and infected with SARS-CoV-2 are twice as likely to develop pulmonary embolism or respiratory conditions, according to the latest weekly report on morbidity and mortality, published on May 27, 2022.
The researchers used electronic health record (EHR) data from March 2020 to November 2021 for American adults to assess the incidence of 26 conditions attributed to COVID-19 long. They used Cerner Real-World Data’s national unidentified dataset.
“As more people are exposed and infected with SARS-CoV-2, there has been an increase in reports of patients experiencing persistent symptoms or organ dysfunction after acute COVID-19 and developing post-COVID conditions,” authors.
Patients were followed for 30 to 365 days after the index was found, and patients diagnosed with COVID-19 (case patients) were paired with control patients who had no evidence of COVID-19. The controls had a visit the same month as the paired case patients. There were 353,164 patients with cases (254,345 patients 18-64 years and 98,819 patients ≥ 65 years) and 1,640,776 control patients (1,051,588 patients 18-64 years and 589,188 patients ≥ 65 years).
Patients were followed until they developed 1 or more incidental conditions or until October 31, 2021. During the study, 38% of patients with cases experienced an incidence compared to 16% of control patients.
The researchers found:
- The highest risk was pulmonary embolism and respiratory symptoms
- Respiratory symptoms and musculoskeletal pain were the most common incidence conditions in both age groups.
- 45.4% of patients 65 years of age or older experienced an incidental illness compared with 18.5% of controls in the same age range.
- 1 in 5 COVID-19 survivors in the 18-64 age group and 1 in 4 in the ≥ 65 age group experienced a disease attributable to COVID-19
There were a total of 26 incidence conditions that the researchers were evaluating and found that patients 65 years of age or older had higher risks than controls for all 26 conditions. Patients with cases between 18 and 64 years were at higher risk for 22 incidence conditions compared with controls. There was no significant difference between patients between 18 and 64 years of age in patients with cases and controls for cerebrovascular disease or mental health conditions.
The researchers identified at least 5 limitations in the study, including that given the time period, the findings may not be representative of patients infected with recent variants of COVID-19, the findings of incidence conditions after infection by COVID-19 could be biased towards patients seeking care. , and the analysis did not take into account vaccination status or other confounding factors.
“The implementation of COVID-19 prevention strategies, as well as the routine assessment of post-COVID conditions among people surviving COVID-19, is critical to reducing the incidence and impact of conditions. post-COVID, especially among adults ≥ 65 years “. they wrote.
Reference
Bull-Otterson L, Baca S, Saydah S, et al. Post-COVID conditions among COVID-19 surviving adults aged 18 to 64 years and ≥65 years – United States, March 2020 to November 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2022; 71 (21); 713–717. two: