Physical activity and long COVID: findings from the Prospective Study About Mental and Physical Health in Adults cohort
N Feter, E L Caputo, F M Delpino, J S Leite, L S Da Silva, I De Almeida Paz, J Q Santos Rocha, Y P Vieira, N Schröeder, C N Da Silva, J C Baptista Gonçalves, H Da Costa Pereira, T A Barbosa, J Cassuriaga, M C Da Silva, F F Reichert, A J Rombaldi
Public Health, doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2023.05.011
Objectives: The study investigated the longitudinal association between physical activity and the risk of long COVID in patients who recovered from COVID-19 infection. Study design: We analyzed longitudinal data of the Prospective Study About Mental and Physical Health cohort, a prospective cohort study with adults living in Southern Brazil. Methods: Participants responded to an online, self-administered questionnaire in June 2020 (wave 1) and June 2022 (wave 4). Only participants who self-reported a positive test for COVID-19 were included. Physical activity was assessed before (wave 1, retrospectively) and during the pandemic (wave 1). Long COVID was assessed in wave 4 and defined as any post-COVID-19 symptoms that persisted for at least 3 months after infection. Results: A total of 237 participants (75.1% women; mean age [standard deviation]: 37.1 [12.3]) were included in this study. The prevalence of physical inactivity in baseline was 71.7%, whereas 76.4% were classified with long COVID in wave 4. In the multivariate analysis, physical activity during the pandemic was associated with a reduced likelihood of long COVID (prevalence ratio [PR]: 0.83; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.69e0.99) and a reduced duration of long COVID symptoms (odds ratio: 0.44; 95% CI: 0.26 e0.75). Participants who remained physically active from before to during the pandemic were less likely to report long COVID (PR: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.58e0.95), fatigue (PR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.32e0.76), neurological complications (PR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.27e0.80), cough (PR: 0.40; 95% CI: 0.22e0.71), and loss of sense of smell or taste (PR: 0.43; 95% CI: 0.21e0.87) as symptom-specific long COVID. Conclusion: Physical activity practice was associated with reduced risk of long COVID in adults.
Ethical approval The ethics board approved the study from the Physical Education Faculty (Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil; CAAE: 31906920.7.0000.5313).
Competing interests
None declared. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2023.05.011.
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