Almost 36% of students and faculty at George Washington University with a history of COVID-19 reported symptoms consistent with long COVID in a new study.
With a median age of 23 years, the study is unique for evaluating mostly healthy, young adults and for its rare look at long COVID in a university community.
The more symptoms during a bout with COVID, the greater the risk for long COVID, the researchers found. That lines up with previous studies. Also, the more vaccinations and booster shots against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, the lower the long COVID risk.
Women were more likely than men to be affected. Current or prior smoking, seeking medical care for COVID, and receiving antibody treatment also were linked to higher chances for developing long COVID.
Lead author Megan Landry, DrPH, MPH, and colleagues were already assessing students, staff, and faculty at George Washington University in Washington, DC, who tested positive for COVID. Then they started seeing symptoms that lasted 28 days or more after their 10-day isolation period.
"We were starting to recognize that individuals ... were still having symptoms longer than the typical isolation period," says Landry. So they developed a questionnaire to figure out the how long these symptoms last and how many people are affected by them.
The list of potential symptoms was long and included trouble thinking, fatigue, loss of smell or taste, shortness of breath, and more.
The study was published online Thursday in the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. Results are based on records and responses from 1,388 students, faculty, and staff from July 2021 to March 2022.
People had a median of four long COVID symptoms, about 63% were women, and 56% were non-Hispanic white. About three-quarters were students and the remainder were faculty and staff.
The finding that 36% of people with a history of COVID reported long COVID symptoms did not surprise Landry.
"Based on the literature that's currently out there, it ranges from a 10% to an 80% prevalence of long COVID," she says. "We kind of figured that we would fall somewhere in there."
In contrast, that figure seemed high to Eric Topol, MD, editor-in-chief ofMedscape, WebMD's sister site for health care professionals.
"That's really high," says Topol, who is also founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, CA. Topol says most studies estimate that about 10% of people with a history of acute infection develop long COVID.
Even at 10%, which could be an underestimate, that's a lot of affected people globally.
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