The following is a summary of “Persistent somatic symptoms are key to individual illness perception at one year after COVID-19 in a cross-sectional analysis of a prospective cohort study,” published in the June 2023 issue of the Psychosomatic Research by Hüfner et al.
Subjective illness perception (IP) and clinical assessment results can differ. Researchers investigated the patient’s intellectual property (IP) during recovery from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). About 74 prospective observation CovILD study participants with persistent somatic symptoms or cardiopulmonary findings one year after COVID-19 were evaluated. Demographic and comorbidity variables, COVID-19 course and one-year follow-up data of persistent somatic symptoms, physical performance, lung function testing, chest computed tomography, and transthoracic echocardiography were included as explanatory variables.
Regularized modeling and unsupervised clustering were used to identify factors influencing IP (Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire) one year after COVID-19. In modeling, 33% of the overall IP variance (R2) was attributed to fatigue severity, decreased physical performance, and the number of persistent somatic symptoms. Imaging and function tests for the lungs and heart revealed lung and heart findings independent of the IP. In clustering, constant somatic symptom count (Kruskal-Wallis test: η2 = 0.31, P < .001), fatigue (η2 = 0.34, P < .001), diminished physical performance (χ2 test, Cramer V effect size statistic: V = 0.51, P < .001), dyspnea (V = 0.37, P = .006), hair loss (V = 0.57, P < .001) and sleep problems (V = 0.36, p = .008) were strongly associated with the concern, emotional representation, complaints, disease timeline, and consequences IP dimensions.
One year after COVID-19, persistent somatic symptoms rather than abnormalities in cardiopulmonary testing influence IP. Modifying IP is a promising innovative treatment strategy for post-COVID-19 conditions. In addition to COVID-19 severity, the individual protective index should guide rehabilitation and psychological therapy decisions.
Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399923000910
