According to a research, 40% of long-term COVID patients had sleep problems.
A new analysis of patients treated at Cleveland Clinic’s ReCOver Clinic revealed that approximately 40% of patients with long COVID experience moderate to severe sleep problems. The report, which was published on Tuesday in the Internal Medicine Journal, analyzed the sleep patterns of 962 patients who had long COVID between February 2021 and April 2022. While 58% of patients reported normal to mild sleep disturbances, 41.3% experienced moderate to severe sleep issues. Black patients were up to three times more likely than patients of other races to experience these disturbances. Dr. Pena Orbea emphasized that the findings highlight the importance of identifying sleep disturbance in long COVID, which impacts patients’ quality of life, daytime functioning, and medical health status.
Furthermore, 67.2% of patients reported moderate to severe fatigue, and 21.8% reported severe fatigue. According to Dr. Reena Mehra, M.D., the director of Sleep Disorders Research at Cleveland Clinic and senior author of the report, there is an unmet need to understand the neurobiological mechanisms or pathways linking sleep disturbances with long COVID, and to investigate the reasons for the increased vulnerability of PASC-related sleep disturbances in the Black population. Dr. Mehra suggested that race-specific interventions be developed to overcome disparities. The authors of the report also emphasized that people with greater anxiety severity were at a higher risk of experiencing sleep disturbances.
Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, M.D., an assistant professor and physician in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, commented on the unequal access to long COVID care for individuals with inadequate insurance, particularly those from minority races. Dr. Galiatsatos called for ensuring that all patients, especially the most vulnerable due to minority and socioeconomic status, have access to the appropriate physicians to provide the best clinical care for their post-COVID complications. He also advised patients seeking good care for their long COVID to visit a multidisciplinary clinical setting.
