We know a little more every day about how Covid-19 works. A recent study reveals that women are more likely to suffer from long Covid symptoms.
If men are statistically more likely to suffer from a severe form of Covid-19 and to die from the disease, women would be more exposed to symptoms, during the acute phase but also in the form of long Covid. This is the finding of a study conducted by the team of researchers led by Giovanna Pelà from the University of Parma in Italy.
To get there, the scientists recruited 223 patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, including 89 women. During the acute phase of infection, women more frequently reported a significant number of symptoms: weakness, loss of taste and smell, chest pain, palpitations and diarrhea. Five months later, the researchers also observed that women were proportionally more likely to still present certain symptoms associated with long Covid. This was the case for dyspnea (difficulty breathing), fatigue, chest pain and palpitations. In detail, 97% of the participants in this study were still symptomatic at the end of 5 months of follow-up, against 84% of the men.
Further studies are needed to understand the association of gender with this higher risk of symptoms remote from infection. But above all to set up an effective therapeutic strategy adapted to patients, taking into account the specificities linked to their sex.