Psychological and neuropsychological syndrome associated with Long-COVID.

Raquel Gomez Bravo, Charles Benoy, Mark Ritzen, Claus Vögele

Keywords: Long-COVID, COVID-19, post-COVID-19 syndrome, mental health, Psychological test, neuropsychological testing

Background:

Reports on long-term effects of COVID19 symptoms continue to rise while the pandemic is evolving. It is estimated that 30% of people treated for COVID-19 have developed 'Long COVID.' Several post-COVID syndrome categories have been described that cover a range of physical, psychological and neuropsychological symptoms, although these have not yet been sufficiently and adequately been described.

Research questions:

The overall aim of this project is to improve our understanding of the psychological and neuropsychological syndromes associated with Long COVID.

1) To describe the different syndromes associated with psychological and neuropsychological symptoms associated with Long COVID.

2) To analyze and phenotype the different syndromes associated with psychological and neuropsychological symptoms associated with Long COVID.

3) To identify the factors associated with the development of Long COVID characterized by psychological and/or neuropsychological features (e.g. infection related, treatment associated with COVID-19)

Method:

Methodology: Descriptive, cross-sectional survey using an online questionnaire and online neuropsychological testing.

Recruitment: Participants were recruited through public relations, social media and information campaigns targeting the general public and health professionals.

Sample size: Snowball technique / convenient sample

No ethical approval was needed.

The project was supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

Results:

Our results will allow for the first-time to draw conclusions on a broad range of behaviorally assessed neuropsychological symptoms including psychological symptoms in a large (and international) sample.

Conclusions:

This project is of immediate urgency and will contribute to important knowledge for the public health management of the ongoing pandemic. The findings will provide recommendations specific to supporting not only country’s pandemic management strategy but also how to combat the impact of Covid-19 at an international level. To the best of our knowledge such an online real-time approach to test for neuropsychological symptoms has not yet been carried in a larger Long-COVID cohort including controls.

Points for discussion:

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