Thread by @ml_barnett

Extremely provocative French study out in @JAMAInternalMed this morning on persistent COVID symptoms.

What is the association between persistent symptoms and COVID-19 serology vs. patient belief that they had COVID?

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

@JAMAInternalMed The authors took a cross sectional cohort of >26,000 French survey respondents and compared their reports of persistent symptoms in early 2021 with:

1) COVID-19 serology collected May-Nov 2020
2) Self-reported belief about prior COVID-19 infection

2x2 table of pt chars below

@JAMAInternalMed Their findings:
1) Positive serology associated with 10/18 persistent symptoms

2) Positive belief association with 15/18 persistent symptoms

3) Controlling for serology, belief, other characteristics, all symptoms were associated with +belief, but not +serology (except anosmia)

@JAMAInternalMed Based on these results - and I know this will raise a lot of debate - the authors conclude that persistent COVID-19 symptoms are highly prevalent in the non-infected community, particularly among those who believe they had an infection.

This is not a study of "long COVID" itself

@JAMAInternalMed From the conclusion:
"Although [we] cannot determine the direction of the association ... our results suggest that further research regarding persistent physical symptoms after COVID-19 infection should also consider mechanisms that may not be specific to the SARSCoV-2 virus."

@JAMAInternalMed Read the paper if you have access and judge for yourself what you think: jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…