Risk factors of the severity of COVID‐19: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) originated from Wuhan (Hubei state, China), carrying similar DNA structure to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has spread throughout the world creating massive panic to the human life. 1,2 The disease has the worst feature to transmit from person to person, 3 considering this feature and its lofty infection rate on January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global emergency.To date, it has infected more than 13.9 million people and over 5 lakh have died. The outbreak has hit the USA, Brazil and India very badly. This three-country together holds over 6.7 million total identified cases and over 41% of the total death because of As no proven treatment/medicine or vaccine is available to date 5 the harm of COVID-19 has already overtaken SARS and MARS. 6 Although the infection rate is very high, all the patients getting infected by this disease don't always die. The global recovery rate is about 59.4% and the death rate is about 4. 25% until July 17, 2020. 4 This information suggests that there may be some factors that influence the risk of death or critical medical states of the patients.That's why it is important to identify and estimate such risk factors to predict the severe complication of the patients for avoiding or to minimise the severity. 7 Researchers are trying to identify risk factors that deteriorate the health state of the COVID-19 patients mostly by using meta-analysis and systematic review. Some earlier investigations reported that males are more likely to die or to go through the critical states of COVID-19. 8,9 There is an ongoing debate on whether smoking is a risk factor for COVID-19 severity. Although some regard it as a

Clinical determinants of the severity of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…We also found some comorbidities were potentially high-risk factors for severe disease and this is consistent with other recent studies [53,55,[57][58][59]. For example, as a chronic respiratory illness, COPD has already led to airflow blockage and so raises the risk of respiratory complications like ARDS.…”

“…Our analysis has shown that males, obese patients (BMI � 30kg/m 2 ), patients with advanced age or a smoking history faced a greater risk of having severe COVID-19. This finding has also been supported by some previous studies [52][53][54]. However, some of the results of one meta-analysis were not consistent with our analysis, since they found gender irrelevant to the severity of COVID-19, which may possibly be due to the relatively small sample size [55].…”

“…Therefore, more attention should be paid to those obese elderly males with a history of smoking, and the above comorbidities or complications since they are more likely to develop the severe from of the disease. Although four previous studies [52,53,55,[57][58][59] have reported some risk factors for severe COVID-19, our analysis involved and reported on new factors obesity and chronic liver disease. In this study, the quality of evidence was higher since all the included studies were cohort studies rather than case-control studies, and we have included 41 eligible studies that were published from February,2020 to March, 2021, spanning a period of seven months.…”

Clinical profile and factors associated with COVID-19 in Yaounde, Cameroon: A prospective cohort study

“…Elsewhere, increasing age, male gender, comorbidities (e.g., diabetes, lung disease) have also been associated with COVID-19 severity [ 22 – 24 ]. In addition, HIV infection appeared as a significant predictor of severity in this study though not reported in Western settings.…”

“…The small representation of patients aged more than 70 years in our sample might explain this finding. In a meta-analysis conducted by Rahman et al (2020), male gender, hypertension, diabetes, fatigue or myalgia, and smoking history were found to be risk factors for COVID-19 severity [ 22 ]. There are some differences in comparison with our results, which do not include smoking, hypertension as risk factors for severity.…”