Credit: Original article published here.A new study finds that female sex, being over the age of 40, and being overweight are among the factors associated with post-COVID-19 condition, or Long COVID. The study also showed that being vaccinated significantly lowers the risk of Long COVID. findings were reported this week in JAMA Internal Medicine. The COVID-19 pandemic has appreciably increased morbidity and mortality worldwide. Its postviral symptoms – which include but are not limited to – dyspnea, headache, loss of smell and/or taste, and fatigue – have received many labels, but they are perhaps most commonly referred to as Long COVID. The World Health Organization defines Long COVID as post-acute COVID symptoms which persist 3 months post-infection with a duration of at least 2 months. Previous studies have assessed which individuals may be at a higher risk of Long COVID; however, as the researchers noted, these studies often had relatively few patients. In this large-scale meta-analysis, researchers assayed Medline and Embase databases to identify 41 articles consisting of 860,783 patients with the goal of discerning risk factors and/or predictors of Long COVID in adult (18 years and older) patients. The risk factors for Long COVID which were measured included included: