Long COVID symptoms can improve over time, but full recovery is less common
A new RECOVER study finds that improvement is possible for many people with Long COVID, but symptoms can remain for years.
About half of RECOVER adult study participants with likely Long COVID one year after a SARS-CoV-2 infection had sustained improvement in their symptoms over the next two years. About 1 in 4 participants with likely Long COVID (26.9%) experienced complete remission over the same period, meaning they no longer reported any of the symptoms measured by RECOVER’s Long COVID research index (LCRI).
In a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, RECOVER researchers examined how Long COVID symptoms improve in 1,019 adults taking part in the initiative’s observational cohort studies. This study builds on previous RECOVER research, which evaluated how Long COVID presents and progresses in adults over time during the first 15 months after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Participants completed symptom surveys every 3 months, and researchers scored the surveys using the LCRI. Using these scores, researchers then identified participants with likely Long COVID, defined as a score of 11 or higher, one year after infection.
Within 3 years of infection, an estimated 1 out of 2 participants (50.1%) scored below the LCRI’s threshold for Long COVID on 2 consecutive symptom surveys, a sign of sustained improvement. Researchers also found that improvement varied depending on the pattern of a person’s Long COVID symptoms:
- An estimated 3 out of 5 participants (60%) with predominantly smell or taste symptoms improved, compared with about 1 in 5 participants (19%) with symptoms across body systems.
- Improvement was also higher among people who first had the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and lower among those aged 46-64 than among those aged 18-45.
Read the press release from Mass General Brigham.