Exercise helps long covid patients in a randomized trial
But what happens if you don't have long covid
A recent randomized trial in the British Medical Journal offers the first evidence based prescription for self reported long COVID: exercise.
The paper is entitled: Clinical effectiveness of an online supervised group physical and mental health rehabilitation programme for adults with post-covid-19 condition (REGAIN study): multicentre randomised controlled trial.
Researchers enrolled people who had been hospitalized recently and had had COVID, but who were discharged home. Participants had to claim ongoing damage from COVID, aka self reported long COVID. They were randomized to an 8 week group exercise program or a single check in. The primary endpoint was quality of life.
Quality of life was better in the group that exercised. “Compared with usual care, the REGAIN intervention led to improvements in health related quality of life (adjusted mean difference in PROPr score 0.03 (95% confidence interval 0.01 to 0.05), P=0.02) at three months, driven predominantly by greater improvements in the PROMIS subscores for depression (1.39 (0.06 to 2.71), P=0.04), fatigue (2.50 (1.19 to 3.81), P<0.001), and pain interference (1.80 (0.50 to 3.11), P=0.01). Effects were sustained at 12 months (0.03 (0.01 to 0.06), P=0.02).”
Here is the visual
I am not surprised that exercise improves outcomes for people suffering from long COVID. This paper directly contradicts bizarre advice like this.
Side note: I am surprised that we fund labs to study long COVID when those labs put out bad advice.
All these gains happened even though not everyone fully participated, “In the intervention group, 141 (47%) participants fully adhered to the programme, 117 (39%) partially adhered, and 40 (13%) did not receive the intervention.”.
Side note #2: people who say masking would work if everyone did it should take notice. When interventions actually work— they can work even when *not everyone does it*. Aka real life.
What's my big takeaway though?
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