Middle-Aged Group with Obesity: More Susceptible to Severe COVID-19 than the Elderly
People who are in the middle-age group and have obesity are more susceptible to getting severe COVID-19 than their elderly counterparts.
A new study published in "The Lancet" found that younger patients in the intensive care unit with severe COVID-19 are more obese than the others. It means that younger people who have obesity have a higher risk of being admitted to the ICU, according to David Kass, MD, the study's lead author.
Kass told Medscape Medical News that middle-aged people, like those who are in their 30s and who are severely overweight, should not be too confident that they are much safer than their parents or grandparents from having severe SARS-CoV-2 disease.
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Weight is a factor to consider
The study reinforces recent research regarding the correlation between obesity and severe COVID-19, which targeted younger patients. However, this new study specifically focused on the relative age versus the COVID-19 patients that were admitted to the ICU. The mean age of his subjects was 55, which was younger than his expectations.
Kass said that the relationship was pretty tight because he already noticed from his first 20 patients that they were part of the younger group and had a BMI of greater than 35 kg/sq m. He said that anyone should not assume that they are too young to have a severe coronavirus disease because he said that, according to the study, the defining factor is the weight.
The past president and spokesperson for "The Obesity Society," Steven Heymsfield, MD, agreed with Kass's conclusions and said that they should also take into consideration that people from the middle age group who are obese are also at high risk of developing the severe COVID-19.
Obesity is now a risk factor of severe COVID-19
The researchers of the study anticipated the same results as those obtained by the largest study composed of 1591 ICU patients from Italy, where 203 of them are below 51 years. The subjects had common conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
Kass said that when the coronavirus started in the US, they did not include obesity as a risk factor, only the old age. Kass and his colleagues did a quick evaluation of the link between COVID-19 patients in the ICU of different hospitals and BMI. They found that most of them are younger, regardless of gender.
Kass said that one of the reasons obesity could cause severe coronavirus disease is because the extra weight puts pressure on the diaphragm while lying causes difficulty in breathing. Apart from that, he also said that morbid obesity is a sort of proinflammatory.
He also said that the SARS-CoV-2 attaches more to the adipose tissue (also known as fat) than in the lungs, which could then turn into a viral replication depot.
Many Americans are obese
Forty percent of the US population is obese, so this study is particularly relevant for the Americans. Besides that, shortness of breath is commonly seen in people who are obese regardless of illness, which is the same as the symptom of COVID-19, said Heymsfield.
In conclusion, he said that people with obesity should be educated about the seriousness of the coronavirus disease complications because it appears suddenly after infection even if the virus is still working its way on invading the individual for a long time.
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