Chai, Yi, Lam, Ivan C. H., Man, Kenneth K. C., Hayes, Joseph F., Wan, Eric Y. F., Li, Xue, Chui, Celine S. L., Lau, Wallis C. Y., Lin, Xiaoyu, Yin, Can, Fan, Min, Chan, Esther W., Wong, Ian C. K. and Luo, Hao (2025). Psychiatric and neuropsychiatric sequelae of COVID-19 within 2 years: a multinational cohort study. BMC Medicine, 23 ,
Abstract
Background: The long-term psychiatric and neuropsychiatric sequelae of COVID-19 across diverse populations remain not fully understood. This cohort study aims to investigate the short-, medium-, and long-term risks of psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disorders following COVID-19 infection in five countries. Methods: This population-based multinational network study used electronic medical records from France, Italy, Germany, and the UK and claims data from the USA. The initial target and comparator cohorts were identified using an exact matching approach based on age and sex. Individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 or those with a positive SARS-CoV-2 screening test between December 1, 2019, and December 1, 2020, were included as targets. Up to ten comparators without COVID-19 for each target were selected using the propensity score matching approach. All individuals were followed from the index date until the end of continuous enrolment or the last healthcare encounter. Cox proportional hazard regression models were fitted to estimate the risk of incident diagnosis of depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol misuse or dependence, substance misuse or dependence, bipolar disorders, psychoses, personality disorders, self-harm and suicide, sleep disorders, dementia, and neurodevelopmental disorders within the first 6 months (short-term), 6 months to 1 year (medium-term), and 1 to 2 years (long-term) post-infection. Results: A total of 303,251 individuals with COVID-19 and 22,108,925 individuals without COVID-19 from five countries were originally included. Within the first 6 months, individuals with COVID-19 had a significantly higher risk of any studied disorders in all databases, with Hazard Ratios (HRs) ranging from 1.14 (95% CI, 1.07–1.22) in Germany to 1.89 (1.64–2.17) in Italy. Increased risks were consistently observed for depression, anxiety disorders, and sleep disorders across almost all countries. During the medium- and long-term periods, higher risks were observed only for depression (medium-term: 1.29, 1.18–1.41; long-term: 1.36, 1.25–1.47), anxiety disorders (medium-term: 1.29, 1.20–1.38; long-term: 1.37, 1.29–1.47), and sleep disorders (medium-term: 1.10, 1.01–1.21; long-term: 1.14, 1.05–1.24) in France, and dementia (medium-term: 1.65, 1.28–2.10) in the UK. Conclusions: Our study suggests that increased risks of psychiatric and neuropsychiatric outcomes were consistently observed only within, and not after, the 6-month observation period across all databases, except for certain conditions in specific countries.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-025-03952-z |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Operations & Information Management College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Pharmacy School College of Health & Life Sciences Aston University (General) |
Additional Information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | OMOP CDM,Neuropsychiatric disorders,Mental health,SARS-CoV-2,Psychiatric disorders,Long COVID |
Publication ISSN: | 1741-7015 |
Last Modified: | 28 Mar 2025 17:02 |
Date Deposited: | 10 Mar 2025 10:21 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://bmcmedi ... 916-025-03952-z
(Publisher URL) http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2025-03-07 |
Published Online Date: | 2025-03-07 |
Accepted Date: | 2025-02-14 |
Authors: |
Chai, Yi
Lam, Ivan C. H. Man, Kenneth K. C. Hayes, Joseph F. Wan, Eric Y. F. Li, Xue Chui, Celine S. L. Lau, Wallis C. Y. Lin, Xiaoyu Yin, Can Fan, Min Chan, Esther W. Wong, Ian C. K. ( ![]() Luo, Hao |