Obesity aggravates COVID‐19: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

Yang, Jun; Hu, Jiahui; Zhu, Chunyan

OBJECTIVE: Obesity and COVID‐19 are both world epidemics now. There may be some potential relationships between them, but we knew little. This work was to explore the relationship through literature searching, systematic review, and meta‐analysis. METHODS: Pubmed, Embase, WOS, Cochrane, CNKI, Wanfang, and Sinomed databases were searched to collect the literature concerning obesity and COVID‐19. Systematic review and meta‐analysis were conducted after literature screening, quality assessment, and data extraction. RESULTS: 180 articles were initially searched after duplicate removal and 9 were finally included in our analysis. Results show that severe COVID‐19 patients have higher BMI than non‐severe ones(WMD =2.67, 95%CI[1.52‐3.82]); COVID‐19 patients with obesity were more severe and have a worse outcome than those without(OR=2.31, 95%CI[1.3‐4.12]). CONCLUSION: Obesity may aggravate COVID‐19. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.