Being obese is known to increase the risk of a number of diseases, including heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n
Early research suggests it may also make people more ill with Covid-19, but why is this the case?<\/p>\n
Is there evidence obesity is a risk for the virus?<\/p>\n
This question has been the subject of many studies as experts try to work out the answer.<\/p>\n
In a study of nearly 17,000 hospital patients with Covid-19 in the UK, those who were obese – with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 – had a 33% greater risk of dying than those who were not obese.<\/p>\n
A separate study of NHS electronic health records found a doubling of the risk of dying from Covid-19 among people who were obese. If other health conditions linked to obesity such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes were also taken into account the risk would be even higher, the researchers said.<\/p>\n
And a study of critically ill patients in UK intensive care units found that nearly 34.5% were overweight, 31.5% were obese and 7% morbidly obese (a total of 73%), compared to 26% with a healthy BMI.<\/p>\n
These figures compare to 64% overweight and obese in the UK population – 35% with a BMI of 25-29 and 29% with a BMI of 30 or higher.<\/p>\n
Body mass index is calculated as someone’s weight in kilograms divided by their height in metres squared.<\/p>\n
Given high rates of global obesity, the World Obesity Federation says a high percentage of people who contract coronavirus “will also have a BMI over 25”. Early studies from the US, Italy and China also suggest it is an important risk factor.<\/p>\n
Ageing, being a man and underlying health issues all increase the risk of becoming more seriously ill from Covid-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being obese is known to increase the risk of a number of diseases, including heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. Early research suggests it may also make people more ill with Covid-19, but why is this the case? Is there evidence obesity is a risk for the virus? This question has been the subject of many studies as experts try to work out the answer. In a study of nearly 17,000 hospital patients with Covid-19 in the UK, those who were obese – with a body mass index (BMI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20249,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20247\/revisions\/20249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}