The novel coronavirus has wreaked havoc throughout the world, infecting and killing millions of people worldwide. It has been a year now and scientists have learned so much about it, including the comorbidities that could lead to COVID-19 deaths.
A paper in NIH explained that the underlying health conditions or comorbidities cause an increasingly rapid and severe progression of the infection that eventually could lead to death. The paper also mentioned that 65 years old and above patients who have comorbidities had an increased admission rate and intensive care unit (ICU) and mortality from COVID-19.
To that, experts advise people with comorbidities to take all necessary precautions to avoid catching SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as they usually have a bad prognosis.
Four Main Comorbidities That Leads to Mortality From COVID-19
Experts from Griffith University conducted a meta-analysis on global datasets MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and EMBASE of 375,859 participants from 14 countries.
According to the university's press release, the researchers found that cancer, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension are the four main comorbidities that lead to COVID-19 deaths.
Statistically, chronic kidney disease ranks first as the most prominent comorbidity to mortality from the infection. While hypertension was the most common comorbidity among COVID-19 patients, followed by obesity and diabetes. But despite that, obesity was not linked to COVID-19 mortality among patients.
Dr. Adam Taylor, the co-lead of the meta-analysis, said that previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses were limited because of the lack of peer-reviewed data and global clinical data.
"Comorbidities are frequently cited as risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes, however, the degree to which specific comorbidities impact the disease is debatable,'' he said.
He added that the global study they conducted covers all the comorbidities reported to exacerbate the infection that led to death. The researchers were able to identify which comorbidities pose a higher risk on patients and which group are more at risk of the severe form of the disease.
Further investigation is needed to know why there is a high prevalence of these comorbidities among COVID-19 patients. The researchers stressed that future researchers may focus on the SARS-CoV-2 cell entry mechanism.
High Prevalence of Comorbidities Explained
The global meta-analysis lead author Professor Suresh Mahlingam said that the higher prevalence of these comorbidities in COVID-19 patients is due to the increased expression of the receptor cells (ACE2) that the virus used for entering the cells in the body.
Mahlingnam explained that diabetes patients are prescribed drugs that control blood glucose but at the same time also increases ACE2 expression.
Furthermore, the severe cases of COVID-19 among hypertension and diabetes patients could be explained by the increase in thrombotic complications as COVID-19 is known to exacerbate clot strength.
Patients are predisposed to having the severe type of COVID-19 due to comorbidities present. For instance, those with chronic kidney disease have a higher risk of getting admitted to the hospital and dying from COVID-19, especially those with end-stage renal disease compared to chronic renal disease, Mahlingnam said.
Also, people with autoimmune diseases and cancer suffer from weakened immune systems from using immunosuppressive drugs, making them vulnerable to COVID-19, increases their risk for hospitalization, and becoming critically ill, said Ph.D. student Ng Wern Hann.
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