COVID: Harvard led study finds what influences long COVID risk

A research study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine has found that preinfection healthy lifestyle is linked with a substantially decreased risk of post COVID condition or long COVID.

The study was done by a group of researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in which a total of 32,000 women were studied.

The study found that women who followed a healthy lifestyle before COVID pandemic were at a lower risk of long COVID.

Healthy lifestyle means, the researchers say, healthy body weight, not smoking, regular exercise, adequate sleep, high quality diet, and moderate alcohol consumption.

“Compared to women without any healthy lifestyle factors, those with five or six had 49 percent lower risk of long COVID,” the researchers have said.

For the study, the researchers analyzed health data of a total 32,249 women. These participants reported on lifestyle in 2015 and 2017 and reported history of SARS-CoV-2 infection from April 2020 to November 2021.

The outcome was determined by taking major health factors like body mass index, sleep, smoking habit, diet quality and others into consideration.

The study outcome revealed that among the major lifestyle factors, a healthy body mass index and getting proper sleep of 7 to 9 hours a day were strongly linked to lower risk of long COVID.

The researchers found that women who had a healthy lifestyle pre-pandemic had a 30% lower risk of developing long COVID that can interfere with their daily activities.

The researchers have said that unhealthy lifestyle increases the risk of chronic inflammation and immune dysregulation which, as per several other studies, is associated with the onset of long COVID.

Long COVID is a fact and a serious health concern. The reason less is known about this is because not many are aware of it. Many people are dealing with it on a daily basis.

The common signs of long COVID are: headache, sleep problems, dizziness, lightheadedness, change in smell and taste, tingling sensation, depression, palpitations, fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, cognitive decline.

People are also experiencing tinnitus, muscle pain, persistent cough, recurrent cold, chest pain, diarrhea, stomach pain and rashes following COVID infection.

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Seeing the unawareness around the disease it seems the available data on long COVID cases is just the tip of the iceberg.

“With ongoing waves of COVID-19, long COVID has created a serious public health burden. Our findings raise the possibility that adopting more healthy behaviors may reduce the risk of developing long COVID,” said Andrea Roberts, senior research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and senior author of the study.

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