Summary The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic calls for identification of risk factors, which may help to identify people at enhanced risk for severe disease outcomes to improve treatment and, if possible, establish prophylactic measures. This study aimed to determine whether individuals with obesity compared to individuals with normal weight have an increased risk for severe COVID‐19. We conducted a systematic literature search of PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library and critically reviewed the secondary literature using AMSTAR‐2. We explored 27 studies. Findings indicate that individuals with obesity (body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m2), as compared to individuals without obesity, experience an increased risk for hospitalization (odds ratio [OR]: 1.40–2.45), admission to the intensive care unit (OR: 1.30–2.32), invasive mechanical ventilation (OR: 1.47–2.63), and the composite outcome ‘severe outcome’ (OR or risk ratio: 1.62–4.31). We found diverging results concerning death to COVID‐19, but data trended towards increased mortality. Comparing individuals with obesity to individuals without obesity, findings suggested younger individuals (<60 years) experience a higher risk of severe disease compared to older individuals (≥60 years). Obesity augments the severity of COVID‐19 including a tendency to increased mortality and, thus, contributes to an increased disease burden, especially among younger individuals.

Purpose: Obesity may alter the severity of infection with Coronavirus disease 2019 . Age may impact the association between body weight and severity of COVID-19 in patients with obesity. The aim of the study was to examine the association between obesity and severity of infection in a Danish cohort hospitalized with COVID-19 in the initial wave of the pandemic.Patients and methods: Based on data from the nationwide, clinical database: COVID-DK, risks of intensive care unit (ICU) admission, invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), and mortality were compared among patients with and without obesity. Interaction with age was examined and we used Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting regression for confounder adjustment.Results: Among 524 patients, 142 (27%) were admitted to the ICU, 112 (21%) required IMV, and 109 (21%) died. Compared to This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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