• Sohaib Khatib, Taher Sabobeh, Adam Habib, Sangeeth John, Reynaldo Gomez, Satya Sivasankar, and Amgad Masoud.
• Department of Internal Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, Kansas City, MO, USA. skhatib@umkc.edu.
• Ir J Med Sci. 2023 Apr 1; 192 (2): 699705699-705.

BackgroundFatigue following acute viral illnesses is a major issue that complicates the clinical course of several epidemic and non-epidemic viral infections. There is a noticeably higher trend of patients with symptoms that persist after initial recovery from acute COVID-19. This study seeks to obtain more data about the prevalence of post-COVID-19 fatigue and the factors associated with higher fatigue frequency among patients who had COVID-19.MethodsA single center cross-sectional study was performed between May 2021 and January 2022 at University Health, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. The Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) was utilized to measure post-COVID-19 fatigue. Descriptive and comparative statistics were used to describe clinical and sociodemographic features of patients. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), the chi-square test, and Fisher's exact test were used to examine the statistical association between the FAS score and other clinical and sociodemographic factors.ResultsOne hundred and fifty-seven patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and diagnosed at University Health were enrolled in our study. Overall, 72% of patients (n = 113) were female. The mean ± standard deviation of the FAS score was 21.2 ± 9.0. The prevalence of post-COVID-19 fatigue among our studied sample was 43.3%. The findings of this study suggest that female patients have a significantly higher fatigue score compared with male patients (P < 0.05).ConclusionsPost-COVID-19 fatigue is a major issue following the initial acute illness with COVID-19, with a prevalence of 43.3%. We recommend implementing standardized measures to screen for post-COVID-19 fatigue, especially among female patients.© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.

14 keywords...

hide…