A Systematic Review on the Risk Factors of Developing Long COVID in Asia Pacific

Abstract

Recently, healthcare workers and patients noticed that COVID-19 survivors experienced persistent symptoms after recovering from the acute infection. Due to insufficient research on Long COVID especially in Asia Pacific, this study aims to determine the prevalence of Long COVID and its associations with selected socio-demographic factors (age, gender, BMI, and severity of acute COVID-19) among COVID-19 patients in this region. Articles were searched from several journal databases reporting at least one-month of persistent COVID symptoms. The selection of the studies was based on the PRISMA flow diagram. Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was adopted for quality assessment of the articles and sixteen papers were included in this study. The prevalence of Long COVID reported in the studies ranged from 8.2% to 68%. Existing evidence suggested that female gender, older age, severe acute COVID-19 stage, and higher BMI were more likely to develop Long COVID. This study demonstrated a significant portion of the population may be affected with Long COVID, particularly those with a higher risk. Hence, more emphasis on Long COVID should be given to maintain the quality of life among COVID-19 patients. Keywords: long covid, persistent COVID-19 symptoms, post-COVID syndrome, long-term sequelae, risk factors of long covid