Description:
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<jats:bold>Introduction:</jats:bold>
Long COVID syndrome is defined as physical, cognitive and psychological symptoms that persist for over 12 weeks following the acute illness and are not explained by other diagnosis.
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<jats:bold>Aim:</jats:bold>
To assess medical and health-related quality of life (HR QOL) outcomes at medium-term follow-up in subjects previously infected with COVID-19.
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<jats:bold>Methods:</jats:bold>
2646 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 infection were randomly selected. They were interviewed to assess for symptoms and HR QOL using a post-COVID questionnaire and Short Form Survey (SF-36) respectively. Blood investigations were taken.
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<jats:bold>Results:</jats:bold>
The median age was 44 years (IQR 31-55), 49% were males. 5% were hospitalised and 1% intubated. Smokers comprised 17%, 10% were ex-smokers. 17% suffered from hypertension, 11% hyperlipidaemia, ischaemic heart disease was present in 2%, heart failure in 1%, obesity in 18%, chronic kidney disease in 0.2%, chronic respiratory disease in 7% and type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) in 7%.
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<jats:p>Median time to follow up was 142 days (IQR 128-161). 22% of participants claimed they felt worse than before. Most common symptoms were anosmia (55%), abnormal taste (53%), fatigue (23%), dyspnoea (23%), headache (20%) and myalgia (15%). The SF-36 survey showed that hospitalized patients fared worse in all domains except for role-emotional.</jats:p>
<jats:p>New onset DM was diagnosed in 50 patients, similar to the rate of undiagnosed DM in the population. Hospitalised patients had significantly higher liver transaminases, FPG, HbA1c, uric acid, RDW, MPV, triglyceride levels and troponin levels but lower eGFR and HDL-cholesterol at follow-up. The differences in RDW, MPV, triglyceride, GGT and FPG remained significant after adjusting for confounders (Table 1).</jats:p>
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<jats:bold>Conclusions:</jats:bold>
A significant proportion of post-COVID patients were symptomatic at medium-term follow-up. Hospitalised patients had more biochemical and haematological abnormalities, suggesting ongoing inflammation in those more severely affected.
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