Review on obesity as a risk factor for mortality from COVID-19

The clinical manifestations of COVID-19 disease vary from asymptomatic to moderate and even severe cases.

where different reports have associated

The presence of chronic diseases such as

Diabetes mellitus

Cardiovascular diseases

Chronic lung disease

The presence of obesity and its relationship with the severity of the disease has been previously reported for other viral respiratory infections.

For the analysis of these factors

A methodology based on the systematic review was carried out

Which is based on the search for articles published until June 30, 2020 using four different databases (Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science and Medline (Ovid))

Where included:

Randomized clinical trials

Longitudinal studies

Cross-sectional studies

These in order to identify, that the effect of obesity on mortality has been observed in patients over 18 years of age with COVID-19

The selection of articles and data extraction from the included studies. Data was extracted regarding:

Excluding

  • Letters to the editor
  • Comments
  • Editorials and
  • Narrative reviews.
  • Author
  • Journal of publication
  • Place of publication
  • Type of study
  • Date of study report
  • Number of participants
  • Percentage of men in the population
  • Number of severe cases
  • Body mass index (BMI) in averages
  • Percentages by category of BMI

When evaluating the quality of the selected studies, it was estimated:

Using the Newcastle Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale. Due to heterogeneity within and between studies, findings are reported descriptively.

Getting that:

This review has some limitations, given that the heterogeneity of the included studies; Despite being mostly retrospective reports, there was variability in the size of participants; In addition, the severity variable was measured differently in each study, therefore, a large part of the results are reported descriptively. Despite its limitations, this review provides systematically collected and quality information to describe the association between mortality and obesity.