Key result
Self-reported long-COVID symptoms on Reddit were most frequently mental health-related (55.2%), fatigue (51.2%), general ache/pain (48.4%), brain fog/confusion (32.8%), and dyspnea (28.9%).
Why the study?
The objective was to mine Reddit to discover self-reported long-COVID symptoms, compare symptom distributions across studies, and create a symptom lexicon.
What are the most frequently self-reported long-COVID symptoms among users on Reddit?
Observational (n=4,249)
What are the most frequently self-reported long-COVID symptoms among users on Reddit?
Mining patient-reported symptoms from social media reveals a high prevalence of mental health, fatigue, and pain symptoms in long-COVID that can persist up to 15 months.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
May augment long-COVID symptom surveillance via social media; leaves open validation against clinical data before research use.
Our objective was to mine Reddit to discover long-COVID symptoms self-reported by users, compare symptom distributions across studies, and create a symptom lexicon. We retrieved posts from the /r/covidlonghaulers subreddit and extracted symptoms via approximate matching using an expanded meta-lexicon. We mapped the extracted symptoms to standard concept IDs, compared their distributions with those reported in recent literature and analyzed their distributions over time. From 42 995 posts by 4249 users, we identified 1744 users who expressed at least 1 symptom. The most frequently reported long-COVID symptoms were mental health-related symptoms (55.2%), fatigue (51.2%), general ache/pain (48.4%), brain fog/confusion (32.8%), and dyspnea (28.9%) among users reporting at least 1 symptom. Comparison with recent literature revealed a large variance in reported symptoms across studies. Temporal analysis showed several persistent symptoms up to 15 months after infection. The spectrum of symptoms identified from Reddit may provide early insights about long-COVID.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Sarker et al. (2021) conducted an observational in Long-COVID (n=4,249). Long-COVID was evaluated on Most frequently reported long-COVID symptoms. Self-reported long-COVID symptoms on Reddit were most frequently mental health-related (55.2%), fatigue (51.2%), general ache/pain (48.4%), brain fog/confusion (32.8%), and dyspnea (28.9%).
Synapse has enriched 10 related papers. Consider them for comparative context: