Guillén-Teruel Antonio, Mellina-Andreu Jose L, Reina Gabriel, González-Billalabeitia Enrique, Rodriguez-Iborra Ramón, Palma José, Botía Juan A, Cisterna-García Alejandro
Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, Murcia, 30100, Spain.
Servicio de Microbiología, Clínica, Universidad de Navarra, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra (IdiSNA), Pamplona, Navarra, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2025 Mar 28;15(1):10758. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-94765-w.
Many studies have investigated symptoms, comorbidities, demographic factors, and vaccine effects in relation to long COVID (LC-19) across global populations. However, a number of these studies have shortcomings, such as inadequate LC-19 categorisation, lack of sex disaggregation, or a narrow focus on certain risk factors like symptoms or comorbidities alone. We address these gaps by investigating the demographic factors, comorbidities, and symptoms present during the acute phase of primary COVID-19 infection among patients with LC-19 and comparing them to typical non-Long COVID-19 patients. Additionally, we assess the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on these patients. Drawing on data from the Regional Health System of the Region of Murcia in southeastern Spain, our analysis includes comprehensive information from clinical and hospitalisation records, symptoms, and vaccination details of over 675126 patients across 10 hospitals. We calculated age and sex-adjusted odds ratios (AOR) to identify protective and risk factors for LC-19. Our findings reveal distinct symptomatology, comorbidity patterns, and demographic characteristics among patients with LC-19 versus those with typical non-Long COVID-19. Factors such as age, female sex (AOR = 1.39, adjusted p < 0.001), and symptoms like chest pain (AOR > 1.55, adjusted p < 0.001) or hyposmia (AOR > 1.5, adjusted p < 0.001) significantly increase the risk of developing LC-19. However, vaccination demonstrates a strong protective effect, with vaccinated individuals having a markedly lower risk (AOR = 0.10, adjusted p < 0.001), highlighting the importance of vaccination in reducing LC-19 susceptibility. Interestingly, symptoms and comorbidities show no significant differences when disaggregated by type of LC-19 patient. Vaccination before infection is the most important factor and notably decreases the likelihood of long COVID. Particularly, mRNA vaccines offer more protection against developing LC-19 than viral vector-based vaccines (AOR = 0.48). Additionally, we have developed a model to predict LC-19 that incorporates all studied risk factors, achieving a balanced accuracy of 73% and ROC-AUC of 0.80. This model is available as a free online LC-19 calculator, accessible at ( LC-19 Calculator ).
许多研究调查了全球人群中与长期新冠（LC-19）相关的症状、合并症、人口统计学因素和疫苗效果。然而，这些研究中有许多存在缺陷，例如LC-19分类不充分、缺乏性别分类，或者仅狭隘地关注某些风险因素，如症状或合并症。我们通过调查LC-19患者在原发性新冠病毒感染急性期出现的人口统计学因素、合并症和症状，并将其与典型的非长期新冠患者进行比较，来填补这些空白。此外，我们评估了新冠疫苗接种对这些患者的影响。利用西班牙东南部穆尔西亚地区区域卫生系统的数据，我们的分析包括来自10家医院的675126多名患者的临床和住院记录、症状及疫苗接种详细信息。我们计算了年龄和性别调整后的优势比（AOR），以确定LC-19的保护因素和风险因素。我们的研究结果揭示了LC-19患者与典型的非长期新冠患者在症状、合并症模式和人口统计学特征方面的差异。年龄、女性性别（AOR = 1.39，校正p < 0.001）以及胸痛（AOR > 1.55，校正p < 0.001）或嗅觉减退（AOR > 1.5，校正p < 0.001）等症状等因素显著增加了患LC-19的风险。然而，疫苗接种显示出强大的保护作用，接种疫苗的个体风险明显较低（AOR = 0.10，校正p < 0.001），突出了疫苗接种在降低LC-19易感性方面的重要性。有趣的是，按LC-19患者类型分类时，症状和合并症没有显著差异。感染前接种疫苗是最重要的因素，尤其显著降低了患长期新冠的可能性。特别是，信使核糖核酸疫苗比基于病毒载体的疫苗在预防LC-19方面提供了更多保护（AOR = 0.48）。此外，我们开发了一个预测LC-19的模型，该模型纳入了所有研究的风险因素，平衡准确率达到73%，受试者工作特征曲线下面积（ROC-AUC）为0.80。该模型可作为一个免费的在线LC-19计算器使用，可在（LC-19计算器）访问。
