Black patients were significantly more likely to have this disorder.
About 40% of chronic Covid patients have moderate to severe sleep problems, according to a new analysis of patients treated at the Cleveland Clinic’s Recover Clinic.
The report, The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Internal Medicine, looked at the sleep patterns of 962 patients with long-term COVID between February 2021 and April 2022.
More than half of the patients, 58%, reported normal to mild disturbances, while 41.3% indicated moderate to severe sleep disturbances.
Black patients were significantly more likely to have this disorder, three times more than other races.
“Our findings not only emphasize the importance of identifying sleep disturbances in prolonged COVID-19 considering its impact on patients’ quality of life, daytime functioning, and medical health status, but they also draw attention to the persistent disparities seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dr. Peña Orbia said. said in a statement.
Additionally, more than two-thirds of patients, 67.2%, reported moderate to severe fatigue, while 21.8% reported severe fatigue.
“There is an unmet need to understand the neurobiological mechanisms or pathways behind the association of sleep disturbances with chronic COVID-19 and, in light of our findings, investigate the causes of increased vulnerability to PASC-related sleep disturbances in the black population so that we can develop race-specific interventions to overcome disparities,” Dr. Reena Mehra, director of sleep disorders research at the Cleveland Clinic and senior author of the report, said in a statement.
The authors also highlighted that those with higher anxiety severity had a higher risk of sleep disturbance.
“In our practice, there is a kind of unequal access to long-term Covid care, where the underinsured tend not to refer to us very often…much of this falls under the line of ethnic minorities…we need all patients, especially the most vulnerable, because of their minority status and socioeconomic status. , be prepared to ensure they have access to the right physician to provide optimal clinical care for their post-Covid complications,” said Panagis Galiatsatos, MD, an assistant professor and physician in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“Any patient with prolonged covid needs to go to a multidisciplinary clinical setting for good care,” he added.
​Alaa Diab, MD, an internal medicine resident at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center and MPH candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
