Updated data for Duration of Illness in "long-term" COVID-19.

Hello.

First of all, for those who have responded this day (Oct. 10, 2022) to yesterday's outreach on Facebook in the Endurance Athletes Group, a huge "Thank You" !

As the (old) song used to say: "... Tell your Ma, Tell your Pa, our Love's Gonna Grow." (Bob Dylan).

So do spread the news. Either to others in your posts on FB or by personal contact as you see fit.

I'll be posting updates on these data as often as possible. Use it as you like, while underscoring when you do that these results are quite "young." I haven't yet tortured them statistically to augment their potential value. That will be coming down the road once the response is a bit more robust.

Here are the results from the incoming data in less than 24 hours after I made the following request.

So get with it! Find more responders who understand what we're doing here together.

Again, and as I copied here from my Facebook Post:

"In screening potential subjects for inclusion in an ongoing study of “long-term” COVID-19, duration of illness (not surprisingly) is one such variable.

Other variables besides mean illness duration used for initial screening include: delay of diagnosis, total symptom number during illness, physical symptom number, number of emotional symptoms, and the ratio of the two

to mention some others.

Initial results developed for such comparisons go back to 2020, and as already presented in detail at LTCOVID.com (have a look).

At that time, (Nov. 2020), the illness duration in months (from when illness began to when a subject with ongoing symptoms answered the questionnaire) was 6.575±1.743 months for females, 6.473±1.587 months for males. 54% of respondents became ill after 22 March, 2020, but often very close to that date. Other result findings from then, are available at the above site.

Clearly, (as we all now know), many individuals with “long-term” COVID-19 have a duration of illness quite different (and longer) than that initially discovered mean of about 6.5 months.

That earlier number is mostly of historic importance at this time. It should not be applied to categorize, compare, include or exclude those presenting with PASC or ‘long COVID’ today from further study. But duration of illness remains a most useful and essential parameter for further study.

So this is a request to members of this group to help with an update.

Responses will be tabulated and presented here as well as at StudyLTCOVID.com, the site that summarizes our current intervention here in Belgium.

This doesn’t require an extensive questionnaire nor any personally identifying data.

If you know the exact date when your illness began, send that, and the date of your response to this request (or the date when your illness ended), to ‘data@StudyLTCOVID.com’ If you don’t have an exact date but know the month and year, use that. The mid-month date of the 15th will be used in such cases. Values supplied will be used to generate a new and current estimate for duration of illness. While many large studies are currently underway and others have already published such information, estimates still present a wide range for duration of illness. So I’ve come back to this group as I did 2 years ago since so many responded at that time. Thanks in advance to those who can respond again now. For any questions, use the same email address or place questions here."

Again, if you have some data to input, send it by email to 'data@StudyLTCOVID.com'.

You could leave a comment here below, but that may be a little complicated since the host's format is in French. Not a problem? Then place it here below.

- Date when your illness began.

- If you have the month but not the day date, Month and Year. (we'll use Day 15 of the month)

- Is it over for you? If it is, Great ! Then include the date when you think this finished.

- It's not over yet? (Very Sorry! Prayers for a recovery soon ... ) Then we'll use your response date as the end date for duration (so far).