There is an unusual pattern with long Covid, in that over a number of years, the patients often have static symptoms.
Some patients improve, however, in the ones who remain unwell, their symptoms fluctuate, but do not get better or worse.
Estimated prevalence of each of the 53 symptoms assessed by the Long COVID ST at 60 and 360 days after disease onset (n=968 [weighed data]). Prevalence is estimated by a multistate model where patients were considered to be either “experiencing" or “not experiencing" each symptom. On the assumption that a patient’s state at an arbitrary time was the same as the state at their previous observation time and that each patient’s states before the first observation and after the last observation are unknown, we estimated the prevalence of the given symptom day by day from disease onset. Colours indicate symptoms with a prevalence decreasing over time (green), symptoms with no change in prevalence over time (yellow), and symptoms with an increasing prevalence over time (red).
Most diseases do not follow that pattern when associated with a specific pathology.
The Static nature of Long Covid symptoms