• Bala Munipalli, Yaohua Ma, Zhuo Li, Ravindra Ganesh, Dacre Knight, Ilana I Logvinov, Stefan N Paul, Troy R Delaney, and Abd Moain Abu Dabrh.
• Division of General Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL, USA.
• J. Investig. Med. 2023 Dec 1; 71 (8): 896906896-906.

AbstractIdentifying risk factors for post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) is important. We conducted a multicenter cross-sectional survey study to define and characterize risk factors for severe COVID-19 in adults (≥18 years) treated at our virtual COVID-19 clinic from March 1, 2020, through March 31, 2021. We assessed patient demographics, symptom types, and persistence, incidence of PASC, and COVID-19-caused hospitalizations. Surveyed patients were also asked to rate their perception of the severity of their acute COVID-19 symptoms. Continuous variables were summarized descriptively. Differences among groups categorized by acute COVID-19 symptom severity level (mild/very mild, moderate, and severe/very severe) were evaluated with the Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test for continuous measures and the Pearson χ2 test for categorical measures. A total of 3094 adults completed the survey. More respondents with severe/very severe acute COVID-19 symptoms reported having PASC than did those with mild/very mild and moderate acute symptoms. A significantly greater proportion of respondents with PASC were women (68.4% vs 56.7%, p < 0.001), had been hospitalized (12.2% vs 4.4%, p < 0.001), reported having negative psychological COVID-19-related repercussions (39.9% vs 15.3%, p < 0.001), and required more than 1 month to resume normal activities (38.8% vs 12.9%, p < 0.001) than did those without PASC. These findings may improve our understanding of PASC and provide a framework for early recognition of and intervention for patients at higher risk for PASC. Further research is needed to understand the predictors of persistent symptoms after acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and the risk of PASC.

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