Women are at a higher risk of developing long Covid than men. However, men are more likely to suffer from severe Covid-19 infections and have higher mortality rates, according to a new JAMA study. More specifically, women are 1.31 times more likely to have long Covid than their male counterparts.
“A review of the literature combined with our data suggests that differences in hormonal levels may partially explain the higher prevalence of long Covid in females younger than 55 years. An attenuation in the risk ratio of long Covid for females aged 18 to 39 years may be explained by most pregnant individuals belonging to this age category,” the authors explained in the study.
“Our data align with published data on post-viral myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia, which are disorders that are female predominant and have known alterations in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis,” they added. “Multiple studies have demonstrated that chronic conditions, such as autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, ME/CFS, and Alzheimer’s disease, are more prevalent in females compared with males.”
Globally, more than 700 million people have been infected by the coronavirus since late 2019, and as of early 2025, that resulted in at least seven million deaths. According to the Lancet, by March 2023, more than 65 million people had been diagnosed with long Covid. But several experts argue that long Covid is still under-diagnosed among the masses.
A survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that almost twice as many women have long Covid with almost 7% reporting long Covid symptoms, compared with 4% of men. A 2021 study also revealed that a higher risk of developing long Covid was associated with being a woman, along with other risk factors like smoking and older age. Another study’s findings claimed that college-educated men had the lowest prevalence of long Covid but women without college educations reported the highest prevalence.
To delve deeper into how gender could potentially influence people’s long Covid risks, researchers studied the data of over 12,000 adults who had tested positive for Covid-19. Out of that, 73% were women. They observed that women from the Omicron and pre-Omicron groups had a significantly higher risk of long Covid than men.
“The clinical and public health implications in terms of sex-based differences in risk of long Covid, especially based on age, pregnancy, and menopausal status, are substantial. It is important to disentangle the role of aging, hormones, inflammatory response, and comorbidities underlying these differential long COVID risk profiles and to identify which groups may benefit from specific treatments,” the researchers concluded.
“Sex steroid-based therapies might be suggested to mitigate long COVID symptoms in females, as has already been suggested for acute COVID-19 in men,” they emphasized in the study. “Based on this study’s findings, we believe that the sex-based disparity in long-term illness burden due to long COVID may increase in addition to existing postviral sequelae, for example, Epstein-Barr virus, ME/CFS, chronic Lyme disease, post Ebola syndrome.”
