Ann Int Med: Obesity may increase the risk of death in COVID-19 patients, especially young men.

AUGUST 17, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Annals of Internal Medicine, scientists from Kaiser Medical Center in Southern California and other institutions found a significant association between the risk of death or BMI in patients with COVID-19, and that this association does not depend on obesity-related diseases and other potential disruptive factors.
the results of this paper show that there is a significant association between the mortality rate of COVID-19 and the higher BMI in both young and male patients, but this association does not appear to exist in female patients and the elderly population.
Photo Source: In the CC0 Public Domain study, researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 6,900 COVID-19 patients recruited to The Kaiser Health System in Southern California between February and May 2020 to determine the association between obesity and COVID-19 deaths; Failure, myocardial infarction, and chronic lung or kidney disease are themselves risk factors for poor prognosis in patients with COVID-19, and the study also took into account the timing of SARS-CoV-2 testing in patients, who found that the mortality rate in the higher weight group was four times higher in the 21 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19 than in the normal weight group.
researchers point out that the risk of death is particularly high for men and high-weight patients under 60, and that it is important to use obesity as an independent risk factor so that obese patients can take additional precautions, and health care providers and public health officials need to consider when to provide public health interventions.
Then, researchers from Hopkins University published an editorial in which they suggested that combining the findings of this paper with previous studies might dispel the idea that obesity is common in severe COVID-19 patients because obesity is also common in the general population, and that the study confirms that obesity is a severe COVID-A very important independent risk factor in 19 diseases, and the risk is higher among young patients, may not be because obesity is particularly harmful to the younger population, but other serious co-diseases that are more likely to develop later in an individual's life may be the main risk factor, and men in particular may be affected, which may reflect the fact that male groups are more likely than female groups to develop visceral obesity.
original source: Sara Y. Tartof, PhD, MPH, Lei Qian, PhD, MS, Vennis Hong, et al. Obesity and Mortality Among Patients Diagnosed With COVID-19: Results From an Integrated Health Care Organization, Annals of Internal Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.7326/M20-3742.