COVID‐19, obesity and undernutrition: A major challenge for Latin American countries

Cuevas, Ada; Barquera, Simon

In March of 2020, the World Health Organization declared the SARS‐Cov2 2019 (COVID‐19) outbreak a global pandemic after documenting community scale transmission in every region, including Latin America. The risk factors associated with severity of disease include older age, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular and lung diseases, and immune suppression. Additional evidence strongly suggests that obesity is also a risk factor for severe forms of COVID‐19 disease, while other types of malnutrition increase the risk of hospitalization from influenza‐like diseases, regardless of the causative agent of the illness (1). Although detailed data are not yet available on the impact of undernutrition in the evolution of COVID‐19, given the known inflammatory response caused by this condition, it is reasonable to expect a suboptimal immune response and higher risk of severity, as found with obesity (2).