Obesity, Smoking, Diabetes Main Risk Factors Than Heart Disease For COVID Death

Obesity, smoking and diabetes are the main risk factors rather than preexisting heart disease which may cause death among critically ill COVID-19 patients, a study has found.

Written by: India.com News Desk Edited by: Snigdha Choudhury

Published: October 13, 2022, 10:53 PM IST

Share

Share Article

• Facebook
• WhatsApp
• X
• Email
• Telegram
• Linkedin

https://www.india.com/health/obesity-smoking-diabetes-main-risk-factors-heart-disease-covid-death-5684829/ Copy

After knowing the incident, the local authorities shifted the woman and her daughter to government hospital in Kakinada after the family head informed them about their deteriorating condition.

New Delhi: Obesity, smoking and diabetes are the main risk factors rather than preexisting heart disease which may cause death among critically ill COVID-19 patients, a study has found.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan in the US. As per the study, it was found that patients with cardiovascular disease have close to a 30 per cent higher mortality rate than critically ill COVID patients without the preexisting condition. However, when adjusted for risk factors — including age, sex, race, smoking and others — that relationship was no longer statistically significant.

“The fact that the association between cardiovascular disease and death was so heavily diminished when accounting for comorbidities suggests that cardiovascular risk factors rather than preexisting heart disease are the main contributors to in-hospital death in patients with severe COVID-19,” senior author Salim Hayek was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

The study was published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. For the study, it analysed outcomes for more than 5,100 patients admitted to intensive care units at 68 centers across the US with severe COVID between March and June of 2020.

Of those patients, 1,174 had either preexisting coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure or atrial fibrillation. A total of 34.6 per cent of patients died within 28 days and nearly 18 per cent suffered a cardiovascular event, such as cardiac arrest or myocarditis.

Researchers say the association between such events and death did not differ between patients with and without preexisting heart disease. The study found that the presence of myocardial injury was associated with cardiovascular events and death, regardless of whether a patient had preexisting heart disease. Myocardial injury was common among patients in the ICU, occurring in nearly half of patients who had heightened levels of troponin, a protein released when the heart muscle is damaged.