The impact of obesity on hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in southern Portugal

COVID-19 is the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection, with patients exhibiting asymptomatic or mild clinical manifestations to severe life-threatening respiratory disease. Obesity was early identified as one of the risk factors for the worsening COVID-19 related clinical manifestations. Considering that around a fifth of the Portuguese adult population has obesity, it is pivotal to explore the impact of obesity on COVID-19 clinical outcomes also in this population. To assess the association between obesity and the outcomes of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in a University Hospital in southern Portugal (Algarve), clinical and biochemical data from a continuous sample of patients was collected and analyzed. Comparisons between patients with and without obesity were performed with appropriate statistical tests. From the 215 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, 24.7% were classified with obesity. Logistic regression showed that patients with obesity were more likely to need intensive care (OR = 2.66; p = 0.009) and higher oxygen requirement (OR = 5.04; p = 0.033), even after adjusting for hypertension (which was more prevalent in the obesity group). Obesity in patients with COVID-19 was not associated with increased mortality, as there were no differences in inflammation or sepsis biomarkers, or the use of corticosteroids/antibiotics, compared to patients without obesity. This work highlights the risk associated with obesity in COVID-19 patients in terms of the course of clinical outcomes. This is the first study analyzing the relationship between obesity and COVID-19 when it comes to clinical outcomes in a Portuguese population from the southern Portugal.