Obesity and Risk of Death from COVID-19 [COVID-19 and Physical Activity Series]

Obesity and mortality among patients diagnosed with COVID-19 by Dr. Tartof and co-authors is a retrospective cohort study.  Electronic health records of 6,916 Kaiser Permanente Southern California patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from February 13 to May 2, 2020 were examined.  Dr. Tartof and co-authors found a J-shaped association between BMI and patients’ risk for death, even after adjusting for obesity-related comorbidities. Compared with patients with a BMI of 18.5 to 24 kg/m2, those with BMIs of 40 to 44 kg/m2 and greater than 45 kg/m2 had relative risks of 2.68 (95% CI, 1.43 to 5.04) and 4.18 (CI, 2.12 to 8.26), respectively.  High BMI was more strongly associated with COVID-19 mortality in younger adults and male patients.  Dr. Tartof and co-authors did not find an increased risk for death associated with asthma, neighborhood population density, neighborhood income, or African American race or Hispanic ethnicity.  Our findings also reveal the distressing collision of 2 pandemics: COVID-19 and obesity…and underscore the need for future collective efforts to combat the equally devastating, and potentially synergistic, force of the obesity epidemic. 

Tartof, S. Y., Qian, L., Hong, V., Wei, R., Nadjafi, R. F., Fischer, H., ... & Saxena, T. (2020). Obesity and mortality among patients diagnosed with COVID-19: results from an integrated health care organization. Annals of internal medicine.