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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Movement Science
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1498900
This article is part of the Research Topic Towards a Psychophysiological Approach in Physical Activity, Exercise, and Sports-Volume III View all 15 articles

Associations between physical activity, long COVID symptom intensity, and perceived health among individuals with long COVID

Provisionally accepted
Zoe Sirotiak Zoe Sirotiak 1*Duck-Chul Lee Duck-Chul Lee 2Angelique Brellenthin Angelique Brellenthin 1
  • 1 Iowa State University, Ames, United States
  • 2 University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Physical activity (PA) is associated with better perceived health among individuals with chronic conditions. However, PA’s relationship with perceived health in people with long COVID is unclear and may be modified by long COVID symptom burden. Methods: Participants with self-reported long COVID (N = 379) responded to an online survey cross-sectionally assessing PA levels, perceived physical and mental health, and intensity of CDC-defined long COVID symptoms on a 0-100 scale. Linear regression analyses assessed the associations between PA and perceived physical and mental health, after accounting for sociodemographic, health behavior, and long COVID intensity variables, with post-hoc analyses comparing health across PA levels. Results: Increasing levels of PA were associated with increases in perceived physical health ( = 0.27, p < 0.001) and mental health ( = 0.19, p < 0.001) after accounting for sociodemographic and health behavior variables. PA remained significantly associated with perceived physical health ( = 0.15, p < 0.001) but not perceived mental health ( = 0.09, p = 0.067) after the adding long COVID intensity to the model. Insufficiently active and active groups reported significant better physical and mental health than the inactive group (ps < 0.05), while the highly active group did not significantly differ from any other group on perceived physical or mental health (ps > 0.05). Inactive individuals reported significantly greater long COVID symptom burden compared to each other PA level (ps < 0.05) Conclusions: Higher levels of PA may be associated with better physical health among individuals with long COVID, even after accounting for symptom intensity. However, long COVID symptom intensity may confound the relationship between PA and mental health among individuals with long COVID.

    Keywords: Long Covid, post-acute sequalae of COVID-19, physical activity, Exercise, physical health, Mental Health

    Received: 19 Sep 2024; Accepted: 11 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sirotiak, Lee and Brellenthin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Zoe Sirotiak, Iowa State University, Ames, United States

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