The Observer reports:

In June 2020, as the first reports of long Covid began to filter through the medical community, doctors attempting to grapple with this mysterious malaise began to notice an unusual trend. While acute cases of Covid-19 – particularly those hospitalised with the disease – tended to be mostly male and over 50, long Covid sufferers were, by contrast, both relatively young and overwhelmingly female.

Early reports of long Covid at a Paris hospital between May and July 2020 suggested that the average age was around 40, and women afflicted by the longer-term effects of Covid-19 outnumbered men by four to one.

Over the past 12 months, a similar gender skew has become apparent around the world. From long Covid patients monitored by hospitals in Bangladesh and Russia to the Covid Symptom Tracker app, from the UK-wide Phosp-Covid study assessing the longer-term impact of Covid-19, to the medical notes of specialist post-Covid care clinics across both the US and the UK, a picture has steadily emerged of young to middle-aged women being disproportionately vulnerable.

Dr Sarah Jolley, who runs the UCHealth post-Covid care clinic in Aurora, Colorado, told the Observer that about 60% of her patients have been women. In Sweden, Karolinska Institute researcher Dr Petter Brodin, who leads the long Covid arm of the Covid Human Genetic Effort global consortium, suspects that the overall proportion of female long Covid patients may be even higher, potentially 70-80%.

“This pattern has been seen in other post-infectious syndromes,” says Dr Melissa Heightman, who runs the UCLH post-Covid care clinic in north London. “Around 66% of our patients have been women. A lot of them were in full-time jobs, have young children, and now more than a quarter of them are completely unable to work because they’re so unwell. Economically, it’s a bit of a catastrophe.” [Continue reading…]