Excessive weight as a risk factor for COVID-19 severity ‒ A retrospective study

Introduction: obesity is related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and metabolic disease, and is associated to worsening infectious conditions. In Brazil, more than 50 % of the population is overweight and the obesity prevalence is rising. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019), more than 600 million people have been infected, resulting in more than 6.5 million deaths. Objective: this study aimed at evaluating the association between excess weight and clinical prognosis in COVID-19 patients. Method: longitudinal and retrospective cohort study carried out in a hospital in Southern Brazil. Patients were separated into two groups: thinness/eutrophy and overweight/obesity; and demographic, clinical nutritional, biochemical and outcome data were collected from medical records. Results: the average age was 59.3 years, 53.3 % were men and 66.3 % were overweight. The thin/eutrophic group was significantly older and had a higher prevalence of CVD and other comorbidities. The overweight group had significantly more visits to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Excess weight, when associated to ICU admission, increased the death risk by 4.16 times, as well as being independently associated to longer ICU visits, the use of mechanical ventilation (MV) and invasive MV, increasing the occurrence of these outcomes by around 30 %. Conclusion: ICU admission was significantly associated to mortality and the strength of this association depended on the presence or absence of overweight/obesity.