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Review
. 2021 May 17;18(10):5329.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18105329.

Post-COVID-19 Syndrome and the Potential Benefits of Exercise

Amaya Jimeno-Almazán  1   2 , Jesús G Pallarés  2 , Ángel Buendía-Romero  2 , Alejandro Martínez-Cava  2 , Francisco Franco-López  2 , Bernardino J Sánchez-Alcaraz Martínez  3 , Enrique Bernal-Morel  4 , Javier Courel-Ibáñez  2   5
Affiliations
Review

Post-COVID-19 Syndrome and the Potential Benefits of Exercise

Amaya Jimeno-Almazán et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, is leading to unknown and unusual health conditions that are challenging to manage. Post-COVID-19 syndrome is one of those challenges, having become increasingly common as the pandemic evolves. The latest estimates suggest that 10 to 20% of the SARS-CoV-2 patients who undergo an acute symptomatic phase are experiencing effects of the disease beyond 12 weeks after diagnosis. Although research is beginning to examine this new condition, there are still serious concerns about the diagnostic identification, which limits the best therapeutic approach. Exercise programs and physical activity levels are well-known modulators of the clinical manifestations and prognosis in many chronic diseases. This narrative review summarizes the up-to-date evidence on post-COVID-19 syndrome to contribute to a better knowledge of the disease and explains how regular exercise may improve many of these symptoms and could reduce the long-term effects of COVID-19.

Keywords: chronic COVID syndrome (CCS); functional capacity; long COVID; pneumonia; post-COVID-19 syndrome; post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Physiopathology characterization of the different evolutionary phases of SARS-CoV-2 infection to post-COVID-19 syndrome.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Prevalence of main symptoms in post-COVID-19 syndrome, hospitalized [40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50] or outpatients [51,52,53,54,55,56], evaluated between 4 and 12 weeks after diagnosis. The mean of the presentation of symptoms appears considering all the studies that contribute.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Potential benefits of exercise on the most frequent clinical manifestations of post-COVID-19 syndrome.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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