Infection
. 2022 Jul 22.
doi: 10.1007/s15010-022-01886-9. Online ahead of print.
Post-COVID-19 condition is not only a question of persistent symptoms: structured screening including health-related quality of life reveals two separate clusters of post-COVID
Benjamin Giszas 1 2 , Sabine Trommer 3 , Nane Schüßler 4 , Andrea Rodewald 4 , Bianca Besteher 5 , Jutta Bleidorn 6 , Petra Dickmann 7 8 , Kathrin Finke 7 9 , Katrin Katzer 4 , Katja Lehmann-Pohl 7 , Christina Lemhöfer 10 , Mathias W Pletz 7 11 , Christian Puta 12 13 , Stefanie Quickert 4 , Martin Walter 5 , Andreas Stallmach 4 7 , Philipp Alexander Reuken 4 7
Affiliations
- PMID: 35869353
- DOI: 10.1007/s15010-022-01886-9
Abstract
Purpose: Some patients experience long-term sequelae after infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, despite a present post-COVID condition, defined as "any symptom lasting longer than 12 weeks," only a subset of patients search for medical help and therapy.
Method: We invited all adults with a positive real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 between March 2020 and September 2021 (n = 4091) in the city of Jena to answer a standardized questionnaire including demographic information, the course of the acute infection and current health status. K-means-clustering of quality of life (QoL) was used to explore post-COVID subgroups.
Results: A total of 909 participants at a median interval of 367 (IQR 291/403) days after acute infection were included in the analysis. Of those, 643 (70.7%) complained of having experienced persistent symptoms at the time of the survey. Cluster analysis based on QoL revealed two subgroups of people with persistent post-COVID symptoms. Whereas 189/643 participants (29.4%) showed markedly diminished QoL, normal QoL was detected in 454/643 individuals (70.6%).
Conclusion: Despite persistent symptoms being reported by nearly three quarters of participants, only one-third of these described a significant reduction in QoL (cluster 1), whereas the other two-thirds reported a near-normal QoL (cluster 2), thus indicating a differentiation between "post-COVID disease" and "post-COVID condition". The prevalence of clinically relevant post-COVID disease was at least 20.7%. Health policies should focus on this subset.
Keywords: Cluster analysis; Differentiation; Post-COVID condition; Post-COVID-19; Prevalence; QoL.