Long Covid affects women more and we need to find out why

 

Five years later, long Covid continues to be a puzzle for scientists. A study of people with this syndrome once again confirms that women are at greater risk of having long Covid.

After being infected with Covid-19, you are more likely to suffer from long Covid, a syndrome characterized by the persistence of symptoms of the virus that took over the world five years ago, if you are a woman. Despite the scarcity of studies on the prevalence of long Covid, the association of a higher risk of developing this syndrome in women has been consistent.

A new study carried out in the United States, with more than 12 thousand people, shows precisely this increased risk of long Covid in women in all age groups, except for young adults (between 18 and 39 years old).

Although there are still no concrete explanations for this increased risk in women, the association with comorbidities such as chronic fatigue or orthostatic tachycardia (increased heart rate when we stand up), which are more prevalent in women, are some of the paths pointed out by the team of scientists led by Dimpy Shah (from the University of Texas, United States) and who now publish this work in the journal JAMA Network Open .

The age group that appears to be at greatest risk of long Covid is those aged 40 to 55. On the other hand, the risk is lower in women who are pregnant.

Long Covid is currently one of the biggest concerns in global public health – and one about which many questions remain. Symptoms such as extreme fatigue (tiredness when climbing stairs or exhaustion at the end of work), memory loss, concentration problems, joint pain and constant headaches are among the most common signs of this syndrome. If they persist for three months or more after infection with Covid-19, it can be considered long Covid.

We have experienced first-hand a large-scale infection by a virus with properties that trigger these consequences,” notes Bernardo Mateiro Gomes. The president of the National Association of Public Health Doctors highlights the importance of paying extra attention to people who suffer from these prolonged or even chronic symptoms: “It is a public health problem that should not be underestimated,” he stresses.

"If we better understand what happens in long-term COVID, we will have mechanisms to minimize the suffering of women, but also of men."

Bernardo Mateiro Gomes

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the first three years of the pandemic, between 2020 and 2023, long Covid affected 36 million people across the European Union. In Portugal, the only study on the prevalence of long Covid was limited to the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region and shows that almost half of people who tested positive for Covid-19 maintained symptoms such as fatigue or memory problems one year after being infected.

The researchers, who are now publishing in JAMA Network Open , stress the need to continue “assessing differences in the risk of long COVID” between men and women and “comparing the biological mechanisms” that may explain these differences – either to confirm the weight of immune pathways (and identify them), or to discover other mechanisms.

The next steps will continue to be scientific research. “If we better understand what happens in long COVID, we will have mechanisms to minimize women’s suffering, but we will also be able to identify mechanisms that can help men,” notes Bernardo Mateiro Gomes. Especially because five years later, COVID-19 infections and, consequently, cases of long COVID continue to exist.