Risks for new-onset psychiatric diagnoses and anxiety disorders, but not mood disorders, increased in early postacute phase<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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TUESDAY, June 14, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Patients are at increased risk for new-onset psychiatric conditions in the early postacute phase of COVID-19 infection, according to a letter to the editor published in the June issue of World Psychiatry.<\/em><\/p>\n Ben Coleman, from the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut, and colleagues examined the risk of psychiatric symptoms during or after acute COVID-19 infection in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) centralized high-granularity electronic health record repository. The N3C included data for 1,834,913 COVID-19-positive patients, with confirmed diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection by polymerase chain reaction or antigen test, and 5,006,352 controls. A total of 245,027 COVID-19 cases were available for propensity matching; the analyses included 46,610 matched patient pairs with COVID-19 and respiratory tract infection other than COVID-19.<\/p>\n The researchers found that the hazard rate of new-onset psychiatric sequelae differed significantly between those with COVID-19 and controls in the early postacute phase (from 21 to 120 days), but not in the late postacute phase (from 121 to 365 days). The estimated incidence proportion of a new-onset psychiatric diagnosis was 3.8 and 3.0 percent for the COVID-19 and control groups, respectively, in the early postacute phase. Findings were similar for anxiety disorders, but not for mood disorders.<\/p>\n “Our results have important implications for understanding the natural history of psychiatric manifestations of COVID-19,” the authors write. “Our findings suggest that health services should consider mental health screening efforts early in the post-COVID clinical course.”<\/p>\n