Long COVID and the role of physical activity: a qualitative study
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Abstract
To explore the lived experience of long COVID with particular focus on the role of physical activity.
Design
Qualitative study using semistructured interviews.
Participants
18 people living with long COVID (9 men, 9 women; aged between 18–74 years; 10 white British, 3 white Other, 3 Asian, 1 black, 1 mixed ethnicity) recruited via a UK-based research interest database for people with long COVID.
Setting
Telephone interviews with 17 participants living in the UK and 1 participant living in the USA.
Results
Four themes were generated. Theme 1 describes how participants struggled with drastically reduced physical function, compounded by the cognitive and psychological effects of long COVID. Theme 2 highlights challenges associated with finding and interpreting advice about physical activity that was appropriately tailored. Theme 3 describes individual approaches to managing symptoms including fatigue and ‘brain fog’ while trying to resume and maintain activities of daily living and other forms of exercise. Theme 4 illustrates the battle with self-concept to accept reduced function (even temporarily) and the fear of permanent reduction in physical and cognitive ability.
Conclusions
This study provides insight into the challenges of managing physical activity alongside the extended symptoms associated with long COVID. Findings highlight the need for greater clarity and tailoring of physical activity-related advice for people with long COVID and improved support to resume activities important to individual well-being.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.03.20243345: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: Written consent was collected from all participants prior to interview. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: This study aimed to provide in-depth exploration of the lived experience of Long Covid. Qualitative research of this kind necessitates a small …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.03.20243345: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: Written consent was collected from all participants prior to interview. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: This study aimed to provide in-depth exploration of the lived experience of Long Covid. Qualitative research of this kind necessitates a small sample size which naturally limits the generalisability of the research. We took steps to recruit a broad sample in terms of age, gender and ethnicity, but our participants were recruited from a research interest database indicating a level of engagement and access to online research that might not be representative of the Long Covid population as a whole. Future studies should seek to represent those from digitally excluded populations (34) in lived experience accounts of Long Covid, to further understand social and cultural sensitivities surrounding the experience.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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