Obesity increases risk of COVID infection by 34%: study

Obesity, a known risk factor for many chronic diseases, may also augment the risk of COVID-19 infection, a recent study finds.

Previous studies have shown that obesity can augment a person’s likelihood of developing stern SARS-CoV-2 infections. The up-to-date study examined how being obese, with a body mass index greater than 30 kilograms per square meter in adults and a growth curve greater than the 95th percentile in children, affects susceptibility to COVID-19 infection.

The study was carried out among more than 72,000 participants, including adults and children, who visited Birmingham and Women’s Hospital in the UK, between March 2020 and January 2021.

The results suggest that obesity not only worsens COVID-19 outcomes but also increases the risk of infection after exposure. “Our study identified obesity as an intrinsic risk factor for the spread of COVID-19 in individuals at comparable risk of exposure,” the researchers wrote in test published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

“Although evidence has linked obesity to severe COVID-19 symptoms, the impact of obesity on susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection remains unclear. Identifying intrinsic factors that augment the likelihood that exposed individuals will become productively infected with SARS-CoV-2 may facilitate design mitigation efforts to contain the disease,” the researchers wrote in press release.

The researchers noted that about 33.7% of the study participants were obese, a number that aligns with the prevalence of obesity in the United States.

“During all waves of the pandemic, obese patients were 34% more likely to develop COVID-19 than their normal-weight peers, regardless of age and gender, as shown by the adjusted logistic regression model,” the press release reads.

However, the researchers observed that obese patients with diabetes and hypertension had a lower risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection if they were older. “This variability may be related to impaired immune response, thus increasing susceptibility to infection. In such contexts, the effect of obesity on susceptibility is less pronounced due to the influence of these factors,” the researchers explained.

“Future mechanistic studies evaluating common signaling pathways in obese individuals may lead to the identification of drug targets that could be used to combat SARS-CoV-2 infectivity,” they concluded.