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. 2024 Jul 25;14(8):744.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci14080744.

The Interplay between Gender and Duration of Hospitalization Modulates Psychiatric Symptom Severity in Subjects with Long COVID-19

Alessio Simonetti  1   2   3 , Antonio Restaino  3 , Claudia Calderoni  3 , Emanuela De Chiara  3 , Antonio Maria D'Onofrio  3 , Salvatore Lioniello  3 , Giovanni Camardese  1   3 , Delfina Janiri  1   3 , Matteo Tosato  4   5 , Francesco Landi  4   5 , Gabriele Sani  1   3
Affiliations

The Interplay between Gender and Duration of Hospitalization Modulates Psychiatric Symptom Severity in Subjects with Long COVID-19

Alessio Simonetti et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

Long COVID-19 is characterized by ongoing symptoms or prolonged or long-term complications of SARS-CoV-2 contraction which persist beyond 4 weeks from the initial onset of symptoms. Gender and duration of hospitalization (DH) are key risk factors for developing long COVID-19 syndrome, but their impact and interplay need further study. This research involved 996 long COVID-19 patients, and we compared the levels of general psychopathology, depression, agitated depression, anxiety, and medication use between hospitalized and non-hospitalized males and females. In the hospitalized patients, multivariate regressions assessed the impact of gender, DH, and the interaction of these variables. The females had higher levels of long COVID-19 symptoms, psychotropic drug use, depression, anxiety, and general psychopathology than the males. The non-hospitalized females exhibited more severe agitated depression than the non-hospitalized males. In females, DH was more strongly correlated with the number of psychotropic medications used during long COVID-19. A negative correlation was found between DH and severity of agitated depression in the female patients only. These results highlight that the gender-specific relationship between DH and agitated depression severity should be explored further.

Keywords: COVID-19; anxiety; depression; gender; hospitalization; long COVID-19 syndrome; psychopathology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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