Η obesity has been associated with a worse prognosis in individuals with infection COVID-19, without studying the relationship between different body mass indices (BMI) and the clinical outcome of the infection.
There is ample evidence that obese patients with COVID-19 infection are more likely to require mechanical ventilation. In order to investigate the association between different BMI with the outcome of infection, a team from Department of Medicine, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine, New York, USA retrospectively analyzed 10,861 patients who were hospitalized in March and April 2020. .
The Doctors Therapeutic Clinic of the Medical School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Theodora, Psaltopoulou, Panagiotis Malandrakis, Ioannis Danasis, and Thanos Dimopoulos (Rector of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), summarize the main findings of the study.
The average age of patients was 65 years, with 59.61% being men. 2.21% were underweight (BMI30). A total of 2,220 patients (20.4%) required mechanical ventilation and 2,596 (23.9%) died.
There was a significant difference in both the need for mechanical ventilation and mortality between the different BMI categories. For example, 12.41% of underweight patients and 73.81% of obese patients required mechanical ventilation.
The category of underweight patients included 39.21% and 62.91% of obese patients. Additional analyses showed that patients with a BMI <18.5 had an increased risk of death compared to those in obesity class 3.
Scientists have been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon, but have attributed it to the generalised frailty of these patients. Therefore, COVID-19 infection has a poorer prognosis in both obese and underweight patients.
