About 34% of postmenopausal women with COVID-19 had symptoms that lasted at least eight weeks, according to the first of two recent surveys. A second survey showed that 84% and 61% of all infected patients still had symptoms one and two years later, respectively.
Data from the first survey came from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) and was published in Annals of Epidemiology on Monday. The survey spanned 37,280 women aged 50 to 79 years, with an average age of 84. The women were asked about long COVID symptoms from August to December 2021.
Of the women, 3.3% reported testing positive for COVID-19 and 34% of them said they still had neurologic, cardiopulmonary and musculoskeletal symptoms, along with fatigue and malaise.
Symptoms that lasted longer than eight weeks included fatigue (51.8%), malaise (34.6%), memory issues (34.4%), and brain fog (31.8%). Over 20% of long COVID patients reported memory problems and fatigue for more than 6 months.
“Long-term health, psychosocial and demographic data are needed to fully understand long COVID risk factors in the elderly and to design and implement effective prevention,” the study authors wrote.
“As new variants continue to emerge and infect people, older adults remain highly vulnerable to long-term health effects from this pathogen,” the researchers concluded. “Continued multidisciplinary research is needed to understand and prevent long COVID to reduce morbidity and mortality and maintain quality of life in older adults.”
In the second study, which was published July 26 in PLOS One, Italian researchers conducted one- and two-year follow-up interviews with 165 people who were COVID-19 positive who had been monitored by a telemedicine center from February to May 2020. The median age of respondents was 53 years.
Of the respondents, 84% reported symptoms that continued one year after infection, and 61% still had symptoms two years after initially getting COVID-19. About 49% who had long COVID symptoms at two years also had them at one year, then had the vaccine and didn’t get reinfected between the two follow-ups.
Having long COVID one year after infection and getting reinfected were significant risk factors for persistent symptoms at two years. Vaccination and immunity were protective, the researchers said.
