Obesity and COVID-19: The Two Sides of the Coin

Abstract

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, a pandemic on March 12, 2020. COVID-19 is causing massive health problems and economic suffering around the world. The European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) promptly recognised the impact that the outbreak could have on people with obesity. On one side, emerging data suggest that obesity represents a risk factor for a more serious and complicated course of COVID-19 in adults. On the other side, the health emergency caused by the outbreak diverts attention from the prevention and care of non-communicable chronic diseases to communicable diseases. This might be particularly true for obesity, a chronic and relapsing disease frequently neglected and linked to significant bias and stigmatization. The Obesity Management Task Force (OMTF) of EASO contributes in this paper to highlighting the key aspects of these two sides of the coin and suggests some specific actions.

Association of prior metabolic and bariatric surgery with severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in patients with obesity

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of patients with obesity and the necessity of creating better strategies for the management of this chronic disease process [ [24] , [25] , [26] ]. Efforts to address the obesity epidemic will help improve not only overall individual health, but also the health of a society, by having the greatest impact on improving health outcomes in a vulnerable population.…”

Visceral Adiposity Elevates the Risk of Critical Condition in COVID‐19: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis

“…The emerging low‐grade chronic inflammation may contribute to the “cytokine storm” in severe COVID‐19 cases (24) and increases the vulnerability to infections as well as to metabolic and cardiovascular complications, such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus, microvascular disorders, or progressive atherosclerosis (25). These diseases are also recognized as risk factors in COVID‐19 (1).…”

Clash of the pandemics – At least 150’000 adults in Switzerland suffer from obesity grades 2 or 3 and are thus at elevated risk for severe COVID-19

“…Second, in four of the five studies included, information on height and weight was self-reported. In Switzerland, too, it has already been confirmed that men in particular report being taller than they are (especially with increasing age) and women, on the other hand, assess themselves less heavy (Faeh et al, 2009;Faeh et al, 2008;Vinci et al, 2019a). In both cases this would mean rather under-than overestimation of overweight and obesity levels in our analysis.…”

“…The health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic currently diverts attention from the prevention and care of non-communicable chronic diseases, such as obesity, to communicable diseases (Dicker et al, 2020). It is important to focus increasingly on the interlinks between the two pandemics, because obviously in this case a communicable and a non-communicable pandemic are linked.…”