Long COVID Symptoms From Reddit: Characterizing Post ... - MedRxiv

Skip to main content Long COVID symptoms from Reddit: Characterizing post-COVID syndrome from patient reports View ORCID ProfileAbeed Sarker, Yao Ge doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.15.21259004 Abeed Sarker 1Department of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, U.S.A

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Yao Ge 1Department of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, U.S.A

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Abstract

Objective To mine Reddit to discover long-COVID symptoms self-reported by users, compare symptom distributions across studies, and create a symptom lexicon.

Materials and Methods We retrieved posts from the /r/covidlonghaulers subreddit and extracted symptoms via approximate matching using an expanded meta-lexicon. We mapped the extracted symptoms to standard concept IDs, compared their distributions with those reported in recent literature and analyzed their distributions over time.

Results From 42,995 posts by 4249 users, we identified 1744 users who expressed at least 1 symptom. The most frequently reported long-COVID symptoms were mental health-related symptoms (55.2%), fatigue (51.2%), general ache/pain (48.4%), brain fog/confusion (32.8%) and dyspnea (28.9%) amongst users reporting at least 1 symptom. Comparison with recent literature revealed a large variance in reported symptoms across studies. Temporal analysis showed several persistent symptoms up to 15 months after infection.

Conclusion The spectrum of symptoms identified from Reddit may provide early insights about long-COVID.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Funding Statement

Funded by Emory University.

Author Declarations

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

Considered IRB exempt by Emory University (Category 4: publicly available data)

All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.

Yes

Data Availability

Lexicon associated with the article is publicly available.

https://sarkerlab.org/covid_sm_data_bundle

Copyright The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Back to top PreviousNext Posted June 18, 2021. Download PDF Data/Code Email

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