Observational studyBMJ open respiratory research2025
Bidirectional relationship between sleep problems and long COVID: a longitudinal analysis of data from the COVIDENCE UK study.
Observational study in BMJ open respiratory research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04330599 (Longitudinal Population-based Observational Study of COVID-19 in the UK Population), which is not on this map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Longitudinal Population-based Observational Study of COVID-19 in the UK Population
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundStudies into the bidirectional relationship between sleep and long COVID have been limited by retrospective pre-infection sleep data and infrequent post-infection follow-up. We therefore used prospectively collected monthly data to evaluate how pre-infection sleep characteristics affect risk of long COVID and to track changes in sleep duration during the year after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
methodsCOVIDENCE UK is a prospective, population-based UK study of COVID-19 in adults. We included non-hospitalised participants with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and used logistic regression to estimate adjusted ORs for the association between preinfection sleep characteristics and long COVID. We assessed post-infection sleep duration using multilevel mixed models. We collected sleep data from participants using a subset of questions from the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. We defined long COVID as unresolved symptoms at least 12 weeks after infection. COVIDENCE UK is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04330599.
resultsWe included 3994 participants in our long COVID risk analysis, of whom 327 (8.2%) reported long COVID. We found an inverse relationship between pre-infection sleep quality and risk of long COVID (medium vs good quality: OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.81; medium-low vs good: 1.55, 1.12 to 2.16; low vs good: 1.94, 1.11 to 3.38). Greater variability in pre-infection sleep efficiency was also associated with long COVID when adjusted for infection severity (OR per percentage-point increase 1.07, 1.02 to 1.12). We assessed post-infection sleep duration in 6860 participants, observing a 0.11 hour (95% CI 0.09 to 0.14) increase in the first month after infection compared with pre-infection, with larger increases for more severe infections. After 1 month, sleep duration largely returned to pre-infection levels, although fluctuations in duration lasted up to 6 months after infection among people reporting long COVID.
conclusionsWhile poor-quality sleep before SARS-CoV-2 infection associates with increased risk of long COVID thereafter, changes in sleep duration after infection in these non-hospitalised cases were modest and generally quick to resolve. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04330599.
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