Who develops long COVID? Longitudinal pre-pandemic predictors of long COVID and symptom clusters in a representative Dutch population

Objectives: Prior studies show that long COVID has a heterogeneous presentation. Whether specific risk factors are related to subclusters of long COVID remains unknown. This study aimed to determine pre-pandemic predictors of long COVID and symptom clustering. Methods: A total of 3,022 participants of a panel representative of the Dutch population completed an online survey about long COVID symptoms. Data was merged into 2018/2019 panel data covering sociodemographic, medical, and psychosocial predictors. A total of 415 participants were classified as having long COVID. K-means clustering was... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Isabel A.L. Slurink
Sophie C.M. van den Houdt
Gaëtan Mertens
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
Reihe/Periodikum: International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol 144, Iss , Pp 107048- (2024)
Verlag/Hrsg.: Elsevier
Schlagwörter: COVID-19 / Long COVID / post-COVID-19 / Clustering / Prediction model / Symptoms / Infectious and parasitic diseases / RC109-216
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28988432
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2024.107048

Objectives: Prior studies show that long COVID has a heterogeneous presentation. Whether specific risk factors are related to subclusters of long COVID remains unknown. This study aimed to determine pre-pandemic predictors of long COVID and symptom clustering. Methods: A total of 3,022 participants of a panel representative of the Dutch population completed an online survey about long COVID symptoms. Data was merged into 2018/2019 panel data covering sociodemographic, medical, and psychosocial predictors. A total of 415 participants were classified as having long COVID. K-means clustering was used to identify patient clusters. Multivariate and lasso regression was used to identify relevant predictors compared to a COVID-19 positive control group. Results: Predictors of long-term COVID included older age, Western ethnicity, BMI, chronic disease, COVID-19 reinfections, severity, and symptoms, lower self-esteem, and higher positive affect (AUC = 0.79, 95%CI 0.73-0.86). Four clusters were identified: a low and a high symptom severity cluster, a smell-taste and respiratory symptoms cluster, and a neuro-cognitive, psychosocial, and inflammatory symptom cluster. Predictors for the different clusters included regular health complaints, healthcare use, fear of COVID-19, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism. Conclusions: A combination of sociodemographic, medical, and psychosocial factors predicted long COVID. Heterogenous symptom clusters suggest that there are different phenotypes of long COVID-19 presentation.