Overweight women are more likely to experience long COVID, new UK research has found.
In one of the largest studies in the UK on long COVID, the study by the University of East Anglia found that having a high body mass index is linked with the condition, and that it is more likely to affect women than men.
The findings are published in the latest edition of *PLOS Global Public Health*.
The research team, led by Professor Vassilios Vassiliou, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, surveyed patients in Norfolk who had received a positive COVID-19 PCR test result in 2020.
Of the 1,487 people who took part in an online survey on long COVID, 774 self-reported that they were experiencing at least one symptom.
They went on to examine their medical records to establish if any factors, including BMI, sex, medication use, other health conditions, and whether they lived in a deprived area, might influence the figures.
Factors Prof Vassiliou said: “We show that more than a half of the survey respondents who tested positive for COVID in the East of England during the first year of the pandemic went on to report long COVID symptoms.
“All of these people were infected in the months before the COVID vaccination programme was rolled out and they suffered from numerous new symptoms that were not present before their COVID infection.
“Interestingly, we found that more women than men had long COVID symptoms. We also found that having a higher BMI was linked with long COVID.
“This is really important because information like this can be used to profile those people who are ‘at risk’ of developing long COVID.
“We also found that people with long COVID were over three times more likely to use healthcare services than those who didn’t display long COVID symptoms.
“We hope that our work will help policymakers plan local services and also inform the wider public of the scale of the long COVID pandemic.”
The research was led by the University of East Anglia with the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board, East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation NHS Trust, Ipswich Hospital and University College London, Newcastle University and the University of Cambridge.
Post-COVID-19 syndrome risk factors and further use of health services in East England. *PLOS Global Public Health* 30 November 2022
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