BACKGROUND
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Korean government temporarily allowed full scale telehealth care for safety and usability. However, limited studies have evaluated the impact of telehealth by analyzing the physical and/or mental health data of patients with COVID-19 diagnosis collected through telehealth targeting Korean population.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to identify subgroups of depressive symptom trajectories in patients with clinically mild COVID-19 using collected longitudinal data from a telehealth-based contactless clinical trial.
METHODS
A total of 199 patients with COVID-19 participated in the study. The data were collected from March 23 to July 20, 2022 through the contactless clinical trial using telehealth. Depressive symptoms were measured using the patient health questionnaire-9 on the start day of quarantine, on the final day of quarantine, and one month after release from quarantine. Additionally, acute COVID-19 symptoms were assessed on every quarantine day. The study used a latent class mixed model to differentiate subgroups of depressive symptom trajectories and a logistic regression model with Firth’s correction to identify associations between acute COVID-19 symptoms and the subgroups.
RESULTS
Two latent classes were identified: class 1 with declining linearity at a slow rate and class 2 with increasing linearity. Among COVID-19 symptoms, fever, chest pain, and brain fog one month after release from quarantine showed strong associations with class 2 (fever: OR, 19.43, 95% CI, 2.30–165.42; chest pain: OR, 6.55, 95% CI, 1.15–34.61; brain fog: OR, 7.03, 95% CI 2.57–20.95). Sleeping difficulty and gastrointestinal symptoms were also associated with class 2 (gastrointestinal symptoms: OR, 4.76, 95% CI, 1.71–14.21; sleeping difficulty: OR, 3.12, 95% CI, 1.71–14.21).
CONCLUSIONS
These findings emphasize the need for the early detection of depressive symptoms in patients in the acute phase of COVID-19 using telemedicine. Active intervention using digital therapeutics may also be required for patients with aggravated depressive symptoms.