Infectious Disease

Life stressors can contribute to worsening long-COVID symptoms

December 08, 2022

1 min read

Source/Disclosures

Disclosures:
Frontera reports grant funding from NHLBI, NIA, NIH and NINDS. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.

ADD TOPIC TO EMAIL ALERTS

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on . ” data-action=subscribe> Subscribe

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact [email protected].

Back to Healio

Stressors in life can contribute to poor functional, cognitive and neuropsychiatric outcomes up to a year after being hospitalized with COVID-19, researchers reported in the Journal of Neurological Science.

Jennifer A Frontera

“Some life stressors have a stronger modulating influence on neuropsychiatric symptoms and quantitative measures of functional status, mood and cognition than do well-known predictors such as age and severity of index COVID-19 illness,” Jennifer A Frontera, MD, study coauthor and professor of neurology at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, told Healio.

Source: Adobe Stock.

Stressors in life can contribute substantially to worse functional, cognitive and neuropsychiatric outcomes 12 months after being hospitalized with COVID-19. Source: Adobe Stock

Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, or long COVID, are symptoms that occur continuously post-infection for months to a year at a time. However, according to Frontera and colleagues, there are limited data that evaluate predictors of long-term outcomes after hospitalization for COVID-19.

They conducted a prospective, longitudinal cohort study of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and assessed the effect of four predictors on 6- and 12-month outcome metrics — demographics, pre-COVID-19 comorbidities, index COVID-19 hospitalization metrics and life stressors .

Of 790 COVID-19 patients who survived hospitalization, 242 completed the 12-month follow-up, and 121 (50%) reported experiencing at least one life stressor within the month before the 12-month follow-up.

According to results, the most common reported stressors were new personal illness (23%), financial insecurity (17%), social isolation (13%) and death or an illness of someone close. The presence of stressors was strongly related to worse anxiety (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.06-1.77), depression (OR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.03-1.96), fatigue (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.16 -1.87) and sleep (OR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.14-1.8) scores.

Frontera said it is important for clinicians to understand the bidirectional relationship between life stressors and COVID-19-related recovery.

“Many of these life stressors are modifiable and can be addressed by a social worker or other local city and state services,” she told Healio. “Having a comprehensive or holistic approach to patient care, including addressing psychosocial issues, may aid in recovery from post-acute sequelae of COVID-19.”

ADD TOPIC TO EMAIL ALERTS

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on . ” data-action=subscribe> Subscribe

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact [email protected].

Back to Healio

Long COVID Resource Center

Long COVID Resource Center

Related Articles