Association between physical activity status and severity of COVID-19 in older adults

Abstract

The risk factors specific to the elderly population for severe COVID-19 caused by the Omicron variant of concern (VOC) are not yet clear. We performed an exploratory analysis using logistic regression to identify risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness among 4,868 older adults with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result who were admitted to a healthcare facility between 1 January 2022 and 16 May 2022. We then conducted one-to-one propensity score (PS) matching for three factors-dementia, admission from a long-term care facility, and poor physical activity status-and used Fisher's exact test to compare the proportion of severe COVID-19 cases in the matched data. We also estimated the average treatment effect on treated (ATT) in each PS matching analysis.Of the 4,868 cases analyzed, 1,380 were severe. Logistic regression analysis showed that age, male sex, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lung disease, renal failure and/or dialysis, physician-diagnosed obesity, admission from a long-term care facility, and poor physical activity status were risk factors for severe disease.Vaccination and dementia were identified as factors associated with non-severe illness.The ATT for dementia, admission from a long-term care facility, and poor physical activity status was −0.