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Observational Study
. 2024 Dec;52(6):2253-2267.
doi: 10.1007/s15010-024-02270-5. Epub 2024 May 3.

Comparison of post-COVID-19 symptoms in patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 variants delta and omicron-results of the Cross-Sectoral Platform of the German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON-SUEP)

Sina M Hopff  1 , Katharina S Appel  2   3 , Olga Miljukov  4   5 , Johannes Schneider  2 , Marylyn M Addo  6   7   8 , Robert Bals  9   10 , Sven Bercker  11 , Sabine Blaschke  12 , Isabel Bröhl  3 , Nikolaus Büchner  13 , Hiwa Dashti  14 , Johanna Erber  15 , Anette Friedrichs  16 , Ramsia Geisler  2   3 , Siri Göpel  17   18 , Marina Hagen  2 , Frank Hanses  19 , Björn-Erik Ole Jensen  20 , Maria Keul  21 , Adalbert Krawczyk  22   23 , Bettina Lorenz-Depiereux  24 , Patrick Meybohm  25 , Milena Milovanovic  26 , Lazar Mitrov  27 , Carolin Nürnberger  4   5 , Wilfried Obst  28 , Christoph Römmele  29 , Christian Schäfer  30 , Christian Scheer  31 , Margarete Scherer  2 , Julia Schmidt  4 , Kristina Seibel  3 , Shimita Sikdar  2 , Johannes Josef Tebbe  32 , Phil-Robin Tepasse  33 , Philipp Thelen  34 , Maria J G T Vehreschild  35 , Christina Weismantel  2 , J Janne Vehreschild  2   3   36
Affiliations
Observational Study

Comparison of post-COVID-19 symptoms in patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 variants delta and omicron-results of the Cross-Sectoral Platform of the German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON-SUEP)

Sina M Hopff et al. Infection. 2024 Dec.

Abstract

Purpose: The influence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants on the post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) remains unanswered. Therefore, we examined the prevalence and predictors of PCC-related symptoms in patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 variants delta or omicron.

Methods: We compared prevalences and risk factors of acute and PCC-related symptoms three months after primary infection (3MFU) between delta- and omicron-infected patients from the Cross-Sectoral Platform of the German National Pandemic Cohort Network. Health-related quality of life (HrQoL) was determined by the EQ-5D-5L index score and trend groups were calculated to describe changes of HrQoL between different time points.

Results: We considered 758 patients for our analysis (delta: n = 341; omicron: n = 417). Compared with omicron patients, delta patients had a similar prevalence of PCC at the 3MFU (p = 0.354), whereby fatigue occurred most frequently (n = 256, 34%). HrQoL was comparable between the groups with the lowest EQ-5D-5L index score (0.75, 95% CI 0.73-0.78) at disease onset. While most patients (69%, n = 348) never showed a declined HrQoL, it deteriorated substantially in 37 patients (7%) from the acute phase to the 3MFU of which 27 were infected with omicron.

Conclusion: With quality-controlled data from a multicenter cohort, we showed that PCC is an equally common challenge for patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 variants delta and omicron at least for the German population. Developing the EQ-5D-5L index score trend groups showed that over two thirds of patients did not experience any restrictions in their HrQoL due to or after the SARS-CoV-2 infection at the 3MFU.

Clinical trail registration: The cohort is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov since February 24, 2021 (Identifier: NCT04768998).

Keywords: Health-related quality of life; Multicenter prospective cohort study; Post-covid-19 condition; SARS-CoV-2 variants.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Conflict of interest: The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Ethical approval: This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. For the NAPKON-SUEP, a primary ethics vote was obtained at the Ethics Committee of the Department of Medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt (local ethics ID approval 20-924). All further study sites received their local ethics votes at the respective ethics commissions. The NAPKON-SUEP is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT04768998). Approval for this study was granted by the Ethics Committee of the Department of Medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt (local ethics ID approval 2021-350). Consent to participate: Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Figures

Fig.1
Fig.1
Study flow chart designed by Biorender; *includes (1) patients sequenced for other than delta or omicron variant or patients tested positive (2) before 2021–07-19 or (3) between 2021-12-06 and 2022-01-17 without sequencing for the underlying SARS-CoV-2 variant; **patients either died or were lost to follow-up
Fig.2
Fig.2
Description of acute and post-COVID-19-condition (PCC)-related symptoms in patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 variants delta (n = 341) and omicron (n = 417). The acute symptoms were categorized into general, respiratory, neurological, and gastrointestinal symptoms. Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) were used to ask the patients for fatigue, pain, and dyspnea at the 3-months follow-up (3MFU). In addition, the number of patients who had at least one of the three PCC-related symptoms was detected (any of the 3). The bar graphs show the symptom prevalence in the acute disease course (a) and at the 3MFU (b). Significance levels between delta and omicron patients were computed using Pearsons chi square test, p < 0.05 = significant. The associations between the acute symptoms (n = 735 after deletion of patients with missing data) (c) and the PCC-related symptoms at the 3MFU (n = 691 after deletion of patients with missing data) (d) and the underlying SARS-CoV-2 variant were calculated with a multivariable logistic regression model. Adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (95%-CI) were determined to compare delta with omicron patients
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