The prospective longitudinal COVID HOME study, which assessed long-term symptoms in people who were never hospitalized for COVID, was presented online by Adriana Tami, MD, PhD, from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands.
The researchers visited the homes of patients to collect data, blood samples, and perform PCR testing 1, 2, and 3 weeks after a diagnosis of COVID-19. If their PCR test was still positive, testing continued until week 6 or a negative test. In addition, participants completed questionnaires at week 2 and at months 3, 6 and 12 to assess fatigue, quality of life, and symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Three-month follow-up data were available for 134 of the 276 people initially enrolled in the study. Questionnaires were completed by 85 participants at 3 months, 62 participants at 6 months, and 10 participants at 12 months.
At least 40% of participants reported long-lasting symptoms at some point during follow-up, and at least 30% said they didn't feel fully recovered at 12 months. The most common symptom was persistent fatigue, reported at 3, 6, and 12 months by at least 44% of participants. Other common symptoms — reported by at least 20% of respondents at 3, 6, and 12 months — were headache, mental or neurologic symptoms, and sleep disorders, shortness of breath, lack of smell or taste, and severe fatigue.
"We have a high proportion of nonhospitalized individuals who suffer from long COVID after more than 12 months," Tami concluded, adding that the study is ongoing. "We have other variables that we want to look at, including duration viral shedding and serological results and variants."
The study by Tami's team was funded by the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMW), and Connecting European Cohorts to Increase Common and Effective Response to SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic (ORCHESTRA). Terndrup has disclosed no relevant financial relationships
31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID): Presented July 11, 2021.