Young and Middle-Aged Adults at Higher Risk of Long COVID than Seniors

It looks like Long COVID takes a bigger toll on younger and middle-aged adults than seniors, a new study finds.

Researchers at Northwestern Medicine weren’t expecting the results they got.

“So, our initial hypothesis was that older people will have worse manifestations of long COVID. In fact, the opposite was true," says Dr. Igor Koralnik.

A team of investigators led by Koralnik analyzed data from 13-hundred patients treated at Northwestern’s Neuro COVID-19 Clinic from May of 2020 to March of 2023.

“We found that young and middle-aged patients in the clinic had worse neurologic and non-neurologic symptoms of long COVID. They were more affected in their quality of life by those symptoms, and also, they had more cognitive dysfunction compared to the older individuals who came to the clinic.”

And their symptoms were wide-ranging and occurred regardless of whether they had mild or severe COVID infections.

One Long COVID patient at the clinic says, "I have blood pressure episodes, a sort of a racing heart. I’m still feeling it throughout my body.  I’m exhausted. In a little bit of a fog. It comes on suddenly and just lingers on the top part of my head. And it’s intense and throughout the day."

Dr. Koralnik says while the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the Long COVID pandemic continues, and it’s impacting younger adults who provide much of the workforce in our society.

“We need to continue to take care of those people, treat their symptoms and do research to understand what is the root cause of Long COVID and how we can prevent it in the future.”

Source: Annals of Neurology

Author Affiliation: Northwestern Medicine