COVID-19 ‘long-haulers’ still experience symptoms after 15 months

Editor's Note

This study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, finds that non-hospitalized COVID-19 “long-haulers” continue to experience symptoms an average of 15 months after disease onset.

Of 52 patients who completed the study, there was no significant change in the frequency of most symptoms between the first and follow-up evaluations, including:

• brain fog (81% vs 71%)
• numbness/tingling (69% vs 65%)
• headache (67% vs 54%)
• dizziness (50% vs 54%)
• blurred vision (34% vs 44%)
• tinnitus (33% vs 42%)
• fatigue (87% vs 81%).

Loss of taste (63% vs 27%) and smell (58% vs 21%) decreased overall, but heart rate and blood pressure variation (35% vs 56%) and gastrointestinal symptoms (27% vs 48%) increased at follow-up.

A total of 77% of the study patients had been vaccinated for COVID-19, but the vaccine didn’t have a positive or detrimental impact on cognitive function or fatigue.

Northwestern physicians have treated nearly 1,400 long-haulers from across the US.