2023-08-15 22:00:00
People with depressive symptoms at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic would have had a three times higher risk of having persistent symptoms six to ten months later, explains an article from the Doctor’s Daily, citing a French study that highlighted this point. These results were published in Molecular Psychiatry (Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02179-9). To explore the predictive potential of symptoms of depression and anxiety in the onset of persistent symptoms (fatigue, cognitive disorders, etc.), the authors relied on data from 25,114 participants (mean age of 48.72 years; 51.1% women) of the cross-sectional Sapris survey (Health, perception, practices, relations and social inequalities in the general population during the Covid-19 crisis and its counterpart Sapris-Serology) of the Constances cohort, explains the daily medical. Persistent symptoms were self-reported between December 2020 and January 2021. After a follow-up of six to ten months, 9.3% of participants had been infected with Sars-CoV-2 and 17% reported to the least one persistent symptom onset from March 2020. Persistent symptoms at follow-up were also associated with female sex, older age, being a current or past smoker, higher body mass index, poorer self-rated health before the pandemic and a history of Covid-19. The presence of depressive symptoms appears to be the most powerful predictor of persistent symptoms in participants, whether they were infected or not infected. Several hypotheses are put forward, recalls the Quotidien du Médecin. Certain fundamental clinical characteristics of long Covid are also frequent somatic symptoms of depressive or anxiety disorders, it is underlined. “This overlap may partly explain why symptoms of depression and anxiety were so strongly associated with fatigue and poor attention or concentration, compared to other persistent symptoms,” the authors explain, who also note that “depression is associated with a propensity to experience non-specific physical symptoms”. Another hypothesis is that depression and anxiety may share some risk factors with persistent symptoms. For example, “depression is associated with low-grade inflammation or impaired autonomic nervous system function, two putative mechanisms of long Covid,” the authors continue. In addition, psychological mechanisms, linked in particular to uncertainty, can thus be envisaged, believe the researchers. It would then be the intolerance to uncertainty that would explain both the vulnerability to psychological distress and the persistent symptoms of all kinds.
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