2023-09-17 09:02:14
Long-term symptoms can indeed and frequently develop following a coronavirus infection. And poorly understood risk factors for long COVID or “post-COVID-19 syndrome” are still being researched. Long COVID has thus become a source of concern for health systems, especially since its incidence rates are high, from 20 to 50% in COVID patients, and its symptoms can last up to 2 years.
Among the factors studied, the circulating coronavirus variant is therefore among the priorities.
“It is essential to understand the link between COVID and different variants of the coronavirus, as well as vaccinations and past infections,” specifies the main author, Sophie Diexer, researcher in epidemiology at the University of Halle. Regarding Omicron, a variant that appeared in South Africa at the end of 2021 and which circulates almost exclusively in France still in 2023, the analysis results in a lower risk of long COVID. So, one might say, over time and with the appearance of Omicron, the risk of developing long COVID has weakened.
Omicron infection, lower risk of long COVID
The study focused, as part of the DigiHero project on a German scale, on data collected from 11,000 participants on their history of infection, their vaccination status and their post-infection symptoms. Participants were asked regarding 24 typical symptoms of long COVID, and 2,822 participants reported having developed such symptoms:
406 or 14%: intense fatigue, 237 or 8%: severe headaches, 202 or 7%: severe shortness of breath.
The analysis concludes that:
the rate of people developing long COVID following Omicron infection is the lowest: approximately 3 to 4 times lower following infection with Omicron vs. the original variant; approximately 50% of patients diagnosed with COVID infection with the original variant developed persistent symptoms; the intensity of the symptoms does not appear to be linked to the coronavirus variant; if the rate of long COVID appears 3 to 4 times lower with Omicron, while the majority of infections occurred during the circulation of Omicron, this means that most long COVID nevertheless resulted from an Omicron infection; finally, in the event of reinfection (by Omicron), the risk of long form is lower, if the patient has not already developed long COVID, following the initial infection.
Good natural immunity has been formed: if “the majority” of reinfections occurred, in the same way, during the period of circulation of Omicron, the analysis thus confirms, and more broadly, the protective effect of a first coronavirus infection (natural immunity ): “People who did not develop persistent symptoms following their initial infection have a significantly lower risk of developing long COVID following reinfection – vs. people infected for the first time.”
Further follow-up studies are currently being conducted to explore the persistence of long COVID symptoms, and, beyond the symptoms generally recorded, the persistence of a wide range of health problems.
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