Metabolism: Obesity is a risk factor for more severe COVID-19 in patients with metabolic-related fatty liver disease

Metabolically associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) patients are mostly obese and are associated with other metabolic risk factors, which may exacerbate the severity of respiratory disease and 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19)A recent study in the journal Metabolism-Clinical and The Internes of Metabolic Diseases looked at the association between MAFLD and the severity of COVID-19researchers recruited 214 laboratory-confirmed PATIENTs, aged between 18 and 75, from three hospitals in Wenzhou, ChinaThe final analysis included 66 cases of MAFLDCOVID-19 was diagnosed by high-throughput sequencing of oral-swallows samples or real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction assaysThe severity of patients with COVID-19 was assessed during hospitalization and classified as severe and non-severe cases in accordance with current treatment guidelinesThe researchers screened all patients for fatty liver scans and then judged whether MAFLD was present against the latest consensus diagnostic criteriaObesity is defined as a BMI of 25kg/m2Obesity in MAFLD patients was associated with a 6.3-fold increase in the risk of severe COVID-19 disease (unadjusted OR was 5.77, 95% CI was 1.19-27.91, p-0.029)It is worth noting that even after age, sex, smoking, diabetes, hypertension and blood lipid abnormalities were adjusted, the correlation between obesity and THE severity of COVID-19 was significant (adjusted OR was 6.32, 95% CI was 1.16 to 34.54, p-0.033)it shows that patients with MAFLD have a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 with obesity than patients without MAFLD