Study highlights link between obesity, unbalanced metabolic health, and COVID-19 depth

In a Endocrinology nature reviews the authors of an article from the German Diabetes Research Center (DZD) highlight the interplay of obesity and poor metabolic health with the severity of COVID-19.

First, they provide information on the independent relationships of obesity, unbalanced fat circulation and unbalanced metabolic health with the severity of COVID-19. They then discuss ways for a complex course of COVID-19 and how this disease may affect global obesity and cardiometabolic pandemics.

Finally, they provide recommendations for prevention and treatment in clinical practice and in the public health sector to combat these global pandemics.

Norbert Stefan, Andreas Birkenfeld and Matthias Schulze summarize and discuss data from large, well-performed studies that examined the independent relationships of obesity with the severity of COVID-19.

Thus, they can eliminate the contribution of obesity, visceral fat and weak metabolic health for the course of COVID-19. In this regard they found conclusive evidence that obesity and diabetes mellitus, but also visceral obesity and even mild hyperglycemia, represent important risk factors for the course of the disease. Therefore, these risk factors may have a positive effect on the severity of COVID-19.

They then discuss the effect of SARS-CoV-2 disease on organ activity, focusing on the cardiometabolically related bones and organs such as the vessel wall, heart, kidneys, liver, gut and pancreas.

Thus, they address both, immediate damage of COVID-19 to the organs and long-term effects of the disease, possibly promoting the development of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. Thus, obesity and cardiometabolic disease not only promote a more severe course of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 disease promotes the development of these conditions.

The authors further elucidate how the treatment of obesity and emotional cardiometabolic health helps to inhibit severe COVID-19 in patients with SARS-CoV-2.

In this regard health professionals and politicians should now, more than ever, promote the health benefits of physical activity and support efforts to implement programs and policies to enable more physical activity and promote a healthy diet.

This may not only be relevant to the reduction of COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality among those infected, but may also be important in the context of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. , where response should be carefully evaluated in patients with obesity and / or diabetes mellitus, as a result of a response that may be reduced or shortened.