Being a woman and being overweight, a combination that predisposes to having persistent Covid

• Interview "Obesity is another pandemic and it has increased with Covid"

Among the factors that best

who will develop persistent Covid are being a woman and having a high body mass index (BMI), as confirmed by research carried out on nearly 1,500 patients diagnosed with Covid.

The study, published in

, concludes that for every

in BMI there is a

of the disorder.

"These two factors have a significant predictive value in healthcare employment among those diagnosed with persistent Covid," point out the authors of the study,

carried out to date in the United Kingdom.

This study corroborates similar findings, which also points to the female sex and obesity as elements that favor a delay in recovery from this disease, as well as its persistence.

Recently, in

, and coinciding with the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, a group of scientists from the Leicester Biomedical Research Center (United Kingdom) stated in their study that

had

after SARS-CoV-2 infection;

Presenting

also made it

prior to the infection.

Now, with this new work, the researchers, also from the United Kingdom, conclude that both factors are important predictors of persistent Covid.

most common symptoms

The most prevalent symptoms associated with this condition in this study have been

(32%);

and discomfort (28%);

(25%);

(22%) and

(20%).

The authors of the work recall that other studies on persistent covid, its most common manifestations were: fatigue;

headache;

attention disorder;

hair loss, and dyspnea.

Lead author of the paper,

, from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, states: "Persistent Covid is a

that develops during or after infection, and is classified as such when symptoms continue for

. Just over two million people in the UK are thought to have it and it affects people in different ways."

Along with the symptoms already mentioned, it can also appear with pain or tightness in the chest;

mental confusion;

dizziness;

joint pain, depression;

tinnitus;

loss of appetite; and changes in the sense of smell or taste.

For this study, the team surveyed patients in Norfolk who had had a positive PCR-confirmed Covid diagnosis

, before vaccination campaigns got underway.

In total, they included 1,487 people, of whom more than half 774 experienced at least one persistent Covid symptom.

After analyzing factors such as BMI, sex, medication use, other complications, and living in a disadvantaged area, they found being a woman and obesity as the main risk factors.

"We also found that people with persistent Covid were

than those without persistent Covid symptoms," Vassiliou said.

In the acute phase: men

Practically from the beginning of the pandemic it became evident that excess kilos was an

in Covid-19.

Such indications were confirmed in larger studies, which came later.

One of the most relevant has been carried out by the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI), which after analyzing thirteen groups of different comorbidities established in patients admitted to hospital due to the coronavirus, showed that obesity, together with cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative diseases were the most influential in a

of the patients.

Unlike what is being seen with persistent Covid, in the acute phase of the disease, the

in all the poor prognosis groups identified in this study carried out with the SEMI-COVID-19 Clinical Registry of the SEMI.

In the researchers' opinion, this could be due to different mechanisms such as the ACE/ACE2 ratio and the regulation of serine 2 transmembrane protease in men.

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• Infectious diseases

• Covid 19

• Obesity