Researchers tracked nearly 17,000 patients admitted to UK hospitals for coronavirus treatment.
Obese people have the lowest chance of surviving a COVID-19 infection, a study has found.
Also being a man will enlarge the odds of becoming seriously ill from the infection.
The ratio of hospital admissions between men and women is 60.2 percent for male to 39.8 percent for female.
Meanwhile, dementia and heart disease were found to be the other underlying health conditions among currently infected patients.
Researchers tracked nearly 17,000 patients admitted to UK hospitals for coronavirus treatment.
Dementia patients were more likely to die from the virus showing a 39 percent higher risk.
Obese patients were at 37 percent higher risk and in those with heart disease the death risk increased by 31 percent.
One reason that obese patients suffer severely and die from the infection is due to poor lung function and perhaps higher inflammation in the fatty tissues surrounding the internal organs.
Possibly this leads to cytokine storm syndromes (CSS), an overreaction of the immune system which can be deadly, as seen in COVID-19 patients.
Professor Calum Semple, study co-author, said:
“Despite the best supportive care that we can provide, the crude case fatality rate for people who are admitted to hospital with severe Covid-19 is 35% to 40% which is similar to that for people admitted to hospital with Ebola.”
Professor Semple added:
“One in three people admitted to hospital with of COVID-19 in the UK have contributed to this vital research.
The contribution of UK patients in such tragic circumstances been critical to improving the global understanding of this terrible disease.
We must do everything humanly possible to understand this disease, so that we are better prepared for the next wave of this pandemic.”
The study was published in Medrxiv (Docherty et al., 2020).
