Study outlines recurring symptom clusters that define long COVID
Laine Bergeson
January 5, 2026
"Long COVID is best understood as a collection of overlapping symptoms rather than a single post-viral condition, suggests a new systemic review published in eClinicalMedicine. The review identified the main symptom patterns associated with long COVID, including neurologic, respiratory, olfactory and/or gustatory, cardiopulmonary, and fatigue.
A team led by Lanzhou University researchers in Gansu, China, analyzed 64 studies from 20 countries involving 2.4 million people. They classified long-COVID patients into subtypes, either according to the co-occurrence of symptoms (30 studies), affected organ systems (16), severity of symptoms (nine), clinical indicators (three), or other factors."
LINK:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-outlines-recurring-symptom-clusters-define-long-covid