Being obese
People were at increased risk for long Covid if they were obese, the analysis found. Obesity, they wrote, often involves a metabolic inflammatory process that could prolong post-Covid health issues.
Being a smoker
Smoking was also a risk factor, the researchers found, although they said it was unclear if that was because of the smoking itself or illnesses associated with smoking.
Having previous medical conditions
Of the medical issues analyzed in the study, immunosuppressive conditions appeared to lead to the greatest increased risk of long Covid. People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ischemic heart disease or asthma faced the next highest levels of increased risk. There was also elevated risk of long Covid for people with anxiety, depression, chronic kidney disease or diabetes.
The sicker people were during their initial infection, the more likely they were to experience lingering health problems. Patients who were hospitalized, whether in intensive care or not, were nearly two and a half times as likely to develop long Covid than patients who were not hospitalized, the analysis found.
“Patients with previous critical illness represent a high-risk population, and their follow-up should reflect intensive plans for prevention, rehabilitation and treatment of the ongoing debilitating symptoms,” the authors wrote.
However, since a majority of people infected with the coronavirus have not needed to be hospitalized, there are greater numbers of long Covid patients whose initial infection was relatively mild.
Other research, not included in the analysis, has focused on more detailed biological characteristics. One study published in 2022 found that people were more likely to develop long Covid if, at the time of their infection, they had factors including certain autoantibodies — antibodies that mistakenly attack tissues in the body as they do in conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis — or reactivated Epstein-Barr virus, a virus that infects most people and then usually becomes dormant.
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