Study may reveal why obese are hit harder by COVID
Study points to relationship between BMI & COVID case mortality and severity
A study published in mid-September of last year that suggested overweight individuals are harder hit by COVID and have a higher mortality rate has made its way back into recent reporting as scientists may have found a relationship explaining why.
An October report in the New York Times cites scientists finding that COVID is able to infect fat cells directly.
The Oct. 25 study reported on has not been formally peer-reviewed, but the senior authors of the study, Dr. Tracey McLaughlin and Dr. Catherine Blish of the Stanford University School of Medicine have suggested that future COVID treatments may need to include the targeting of body fat.
“The bottom line is, ‘Oh my god, indeed, the virus can infect fat cells directly,’” said Dr. Philipp Scherer, a scientist who studies fat cells at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not involved in the research.
“Whatever happens in fat doesn’t stay in fat,” he added. “It affects the neighboring tissues as well.” (Source: New York Times)
The study’s authors say the body’s inflammatory response to disease and that COVID can infect fat cells and reside there and replicate, with the effect being those with more fat have longer and more severe cases.
In addition to fat cells, the scientists also found immune cells, called macrophages, can also become infected with COVID, setting off inflammatory responses.
The Oct. 25, 2021, study concludes that “Collectively, our data implies that infection in adipose tissue may partially explain the link between obesity and severe COVID-19. More efforts to understand the complexity and contributions of this tissue to COVID-19 pathogenesis are warranted.”
The New York Times notes that the study’s conclusions are of particular significance in the United States where “most American adults are overweight, and 42 percent have obesity,” and that “Black, Hispanic, Native American and Alaska Native people in the U.S. have higher obesity rates than white adults and Asian Americans; they have also been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with death rates roughly double those of white Americans.”
Before vaccines were introduced, around 73% of people who died either of COVID-19 or who had tested positive for COVID-19 when they died were considered overweight or even obese.
The New York Times article quotes Barry Popkin, “a professor of nutrition at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied the heightened risk that Covid poses to those with obesity.”
“This paper is another wake-up call for the medical profession and public health to look more deeply into the issues of overweight and obese individuals, and the treatments and vaccines we’re giving them,” said Popkin.
An area not touched on by the study or the New York times is the impact on children.