In a new study from the University of Gothenburg, researchers found men with a high body mass index (BMI) in their upper teens had an elevated risk of severe COVID-19, requiring hospitalization, later in life.
For some time, overweight and obesity have been recognized risk factors for severe COVID-19.
To date, however, there have been no studies to monitor large groups of individuals whose obesity was identified at an early age, and to find out how severely ill they become if they later get COVID-19.
In the study, the team used data from the Swedish Military Service Conscription Register on 1,551,670 men in Sweden.
They found a clear connection between BMI in adolescence and the risk of getting COVID-19, many years later, severely enough to require hospitalization.
Even clearer was the link between BMI in the upper teens and needing intensive care for the disease.
Even for men who had been in the 22.5–25 BMI range in adolescence—that is, within the normal weight range—an elevated risk of needing hospital care for COVID-19 was found.
The need increased successively with rising BMI results from the time of conscription 15 to 50 years earlier.
The team says at the population level, being overweight in the late teens raises the risk of hospitalization and intensive care for COVID-19.
For those with teenage obesity, the risk of admission to an intensive care unit is more than twice as high as for those with a BMI of 18.5–20.
The fact that obesity can be linked to an elevated risk of becoming severely ill from various infectious diseases, such as influenza, is well known.
Obesity has an adverse impact on the immune system and worsens a person’s propensity for inflammation, which can contribute to more serious infections.
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The study is published in Obesity and was conducted by Josefina Robertson et al.
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