The study findings were published in the peer reviewed journal: eLife.
https://elifesciences.org/articles/72500
The researchers have conducted a longitudinal, multi-center observational study in ambulatory and hospitalized COVID-19 patients recruited in early 2020 (n = 145). Pulmonary computed tomography (CT) and lung function (LF) readouts, symptom prevalence, clinical and laboratory parameters were collected during acute COVID-19 and at 60-, 100- and 180-days follow-up visits.
Results: At the six-month follow-up, 49% of participants reported persistent symptoms. The frequency of structural lung CT abnormalities ranged from 18% in the mild outpatient cases to 76% in the ICU convalescents. Prevalence of impaired LF ranged from 14% in the mild outpatient cases to 50% in the ICU survivors.
Incomplete radiological lung recovery was associated with increased anti-S1/S2 antibody titer, IL-6 and CRP levels at the early follow-up. We demonstrated that the risk of perturbed pulmonary recovery could be robustly estimated at early follow-up by clustering and machine learning classifiers employing solely non-CT and non-LF parameters.
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