Latest pandemic research looks at persistent symptoms of COVID-19, rise in alcohol deaths
More than half of patients with mild COVID-19 reported symptoms months later in one study, while another found psychiatric and neurologic consequences were similar in ICU survivors with and without COVID-19. Other research looked at the rise in alcohol-related deaths and the safety of vaccination during pregnancy.
The prevalence of symptoms after mild COVID-19 was evaluated by a Swiss study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine on March 22. It included 418 patients, mostly health care workers, who tested positive for COVID-19 and 89 who had symptoms but tested negative. They were surveyed by phone a median of 150 days and 242 days after testing, respectively. Persistent symptoms were reported by 53% of positive and 37% of negative patients. Four symptoms, out of 14 on the survey, were independently associated with COVID-19: fatigue, smell/taste disorder, dyspnea, and memory impairment. Being a woman or being overweight or obese was associated with higher risk of persistent symptoms. The authors noted that headache and sleep disorders were the predominant persistent symptoms in patients who had tested negative and were found at similar rates in both groups, suggesting they “may originate from mixed etiologies including psychosocial factors and/or non-specific post-infectious consequences.” The study also found that 23% of the patients who tested positive required at least one additional medical visit for COVID-19-related symptoms, which highlights “the burden on the ambulatory healthcare facilities that may be related to the post-COVID-19 syndrome.”
Another study of the consequences of COVID-19, published by JAMA Psychiatry on March 23, matched 85 COVID-19 survivors to 61 controls who had been treated in a Danish ICU for another illness. At six months, patients who had COVID-19 had lower scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (26.7 vs. 27.5; P=0.01), but rates of new-onset psychiatric diagnosis were similar in the two groups (19% vs. 20%; P=0.87). The study authors concluded that “cognitive status at 6 months was worse among survivors of COVID-19, but the overall burden of neuropsychiatric and neurologic signs and symptoms among survivors of COVID-19 requiring hospitalization was comparable with the burden observed among matched survivors hospitalized for non-COVID-19 causes.”
Other recent research on the pandemic showed a significant increase in deaths involving alcohol. The study of U.S. mortality data, published by JAMA on March 18, found that alcohol-related deaths rose from 78,927 in 2019 to 99,017 in 2020 (relative change, 25.5%), a greater increase than was seen in deaths from all causes (18.8%). Alcohol-related deaths rose in all age groups, but the largest increases were in those ages 35 to 44 years (39.7%) and 25 to 34 years (37.0%). “Deaths involving alcohol reflect hidden tolls of the pandemic,” the authors wrote. “Whether alcohol-related deaths will decline as the pandemic wanes, and whether policy changes could help reduce such deaths, warrants consideration.”
Two recent studies, one in Canada and one in Scandinavia, looked at COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy and found no association with adverse pregnancy outcomes. The results “are reassuring, especially for pregnant individuals with access to mRNA vaccines in their second or third trimester,” said an editorial published with the studies March 24 by JAMA.