Risk Factors for Severe Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

Background: During the recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic there have been several studies implicating an association between obesity, COVID-19 severity, and mortality. This retrospective study aims to investigate the association between obesity, other risk factors, and COVID-19 mortality of patients admitted over a 6-week period to the respiratory units at the authors’ hospitals. Methods: This is a retrospective study of 71 patients who were admitted into a respiratory unit over a 6-week period where the data were analysed for correlation between various risk factors, COVID-19 severity, and mortality. The statistical analysis was performed using excel statistics and SPSS (IBM, Armonk, New York, USA) statistical software. The significance was considered at p<0.05. The multivariate analysis, Z-test, Cox regression, Pearson correlation, and Kaplan–Meier analysis were used. Results: The mean age of the patients was 65.8 years (range: 35.0–93.0 years) standard deviation (13.21) and the male to female ratio was 2.73 (52:19, respectively). The most frequent comorbidities were obesity (42/71; 59%), hypertension (36/71; 50%), diabetes (22/71; 31%), heart disease (13/71; 18%), respiratory disease (9/71; 13%), and cancer (8/71; 11%). The mean body weight was 83.7 kg (60.4–147.7 kg) and the mean BMI was 32.2 (22.0–53.0 kg/m2). Smoking was reported in 8 (11%) of the patients. There were 20 (83%) mortalities among patients >70 years old (p<0.0001), 20 (83%) deaths among male patients (p<0.0001), 14 (58%) deaths among patients with a BMI >25 kg/m2 (p=0.001), 17 (70%) deaths reported for patients with hypertension (p=0.008), 6 (25%) mortalities for patients with cardiovascular disease (p=0.001), 14 (30%) deaths among patients who were mechanically ventilated (p=0.00028), and 5 (20%) mortalities among patients with cancer (p=0.003). Conclusions: Obesity, cancer, mechanical ventilation, male sex, intensive care unit admission, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension are significant risk factors for mortality in patients with COVID-19.