Browsing by Subject "Long covid"

Objective: The COVID-19 disease causes long-term symptoms to a proportion of patients, of which fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments have appeared to be common. So far, there is little knowledge about the manifestation and stability of fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments during a longer follow-up period. The association between fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments after the COVID-19 disease has not been studied before at all. The purpose of this study was to investigate the occurrence of fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments two years after the acute phase of the COVID-19 disease and whether there has been a temporal change in the symptoms between three, six and 24 months. In addition, the relationship between fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments was studied two years after the acute phase of the COVID-19 disease. Methods: This study is part of the Recovid-20 project. The sample (n=154) consisted of three groups of patients (intensive care unit n=58, regular hospital ward n=35, isolated at home n=27), who were examined three, six and 24 moths after the acute phase and healthy controls (n=34), who were examined at two time points. The MFI-20- and ABNAS-questionnaires were used as measures. Group differences were assessed with one-way ANOVA and changes in symptoms over time with repeated measures ANOVA. The associations between fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments were studied with linear regression analysis. Results and conclusion: This study showed that COVID-19 patients appeared long-term fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments still two years after the acute phase of the COVID-19 disease regardless of the severity of the acute disease. However, a quarter reported clinically significant subjective cognitive impairments at the two-year follow-up. No temporal change was observed between fatigue symptoms measured at six and 24 months and subjective cognitive impairments measured at three, six and 24 months. Fatigue and subjective cognitive impairments were also strongly associated – the more the patients reported fatigue the more they also reported subjective cognitive impairments.