Nearly all patients who recovered from COVID-19 report lingering fatigue, while half experience sleep disturbances, according to new research.
Researchers analysed data from 962 patients from the Cleveland Clinic ReCOVer Clinic between February 2021 and April 2022.
More than two thirds of patients – 67.2 per cent – reported at least moderate fatigue, while 21.8 per cent reported severe fatigue.
Eight percent of patients reported severe sleep disturbances, and 41.3 per cent reported at least moderate sleep disturbances.
The research team found that severe sleep disturbances up to three times more common in black people.
The study builds further on a UK study, which found that people who tested positive for COVID were found to have a six-fold increase in the likelihood of reporting fatigue to a GP, and a three-fold increase in the risk of sleep problems.
“Sleep difficulties are highly prevalent and debilitating symptoms reported in patients with post-acute sequealae of COVID-19,” said Dr Cinthya Pena Orbea, a sleep specialist at Cleveland Clinic.
“Our study suggests that the prevalence of moderate to severe sleep disturbances is high and that black race confers increased odds to suffer from moderate to severe sleep disturbances, highlighting the importance to further understand race-specific determinants of sleep disturbances in order to develop race-specific interventions.”
Patients with moderate-to-severe compared with normal-to-mild sleep disturbances had higher body mass indices, were more likely to be black, and had worse general anxiety disorder, the study found.
The patients had all recovered from COVID-19 and completed the sleep disturbance and fatigue questionnaires of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System.
