[en] A major challenge in diagnosing post COVID lies in differentiating symptoms following a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection from those that may also occur in uninfected individuals (post COVID mimics) and be associated with a broader impact of the pandemic. The WHO post COVID definition was applied to the Luxembourgish longitudinal CON-VINCE cohort, where SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed via either a positive RT-qPCR or a serology test. Risk factor analysis was conducted on 1,865 individuals. Female gender, lower resilience, greater loneliness, and a higher number of comorbidities were associated with symptoms persistence. The symptomatology and comorbidity profiles of 559 participants (including 50 post COVID and 66 post COVID mimics) were investigated. Two distinct clusters of persistent symptoms were identified: (1) depression with anxiety, present in both infected and non-infected groups, and (2) memory impairment with fatigue, unique to the post COVID group. Therefore, presence of both memory impairment and fatigue may help differentiate post COVID patients from post COVID mimics. Yet, verification that memory impairment was newly developed was not possible, as this symptom was not recorded at baseline. Our findings suggest that future studies should consider factors affecting development of persistent post COVID-like symptoms observed in individuals that were never infected.
Disciplines :
Immunology & infectious disease Public health, health care sciences & services
Author, co-author :
MARTINS CONDE, Patricia ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) > Digital Medicine
Bulaev, Dmitry; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg
RAUSCHENBERGER, Armin ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine > Biomedical Data Science > Team Enrico GLAAB ; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg
OHNMACHT, Jochen ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine > Translational Neuroscience > Team Rejko KRÜGER ; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg
Fritz, Joëlle V; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg
O'Sullivan, Marc P; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg ; Eurostat, European Commission, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
ANCIEN, François ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) > Clinical and Translational Informatics
GHOSH, Soumyabrata ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) > Bioinformatics Core
TSURKALENKO, Olena ; University of Luxembourg ; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg ; Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
KOLODKIN, Alexey ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine > Bioinformatics Core > R3 and IT infrastructure ; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg
SATAGOPAM, Venkata ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) > Clinical and Translational Informatics
Vaillant, Michel; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg
KLUCKEN, Jochen ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) > Digital Medicine ; Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
KRÜGER, Rejko ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) > Translational Neuroscience ; Luxembourg Institute of Health, Strassen, Luxembourg ; Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg André Losch Fondation European Commission
Funding text :
We would like to give special thanks to all participants of the CON-VINCE study and to each volunteer that helped in sample processing or sample kit preparation. Additionally, we are very grateful for the financial support by the Fonds National de la Recherche and the Andr\u00E9 Losch Foundation, which enabled us to carry out the project. The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study, nor in the decision to prepare and submit the manuscript for publication. We also would like to thank the Ministry of Health of Luxembourg as well as the Directorate of Health of Luxembourg for their support. We acknowledge the joint effort of the CON-VINCE team involved in sample and data collection. We would like to thank the Research Luxembourg COVID-19 Task Force (Frank Glod, Paul Wilmes, Lars Geffers, Jasmin Schulz, Henry-Michel Cauchie, Ulf Nehrbass, Rudi Balling) for their overall support of the CON-VINCE study. A special thanks also to the data protection officers Sandrine Munoz and Laurent Pr\u00E9votat. Furthermore, we would like to acknowledge the whole Communication teams involved within CON-VINCE, especially Sabine Schmitz, Arnaud D\u2019Agostini, Didier Gossens, H\u00E9l\u00E8ne Jacuszin for their excellent work and support during the implementation and execution of CON-VINCE. We would like to thank Monica Marchese for her support and thank Philippe Lamesch for important and successful fundraising for research on COVID-19 in Luxembourg.This project was supported by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) \u2013 FNR PEARL Chairs 14146272/dHealthPD/Klucken. The CON-VINCE Study was funded by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR 14716281/CON-VINCE/Kruger) and the Andr\u00E9 Losch Foundation (Luxembourg). The ORCHESTRA project has received funding from the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 101016167. The COMMUTE project has received funding from the Horizon Europe research program under agreement No 101136957. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Health and Digital Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. For the purpose of open access, and in fulfilment of the obligations arising from the grant agreement, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
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