Outcome of COVID-19: Diabetes and Obesity

Abstract

Today the world is facing one of the biggest crisis, due to a new beta-corona virus emerged from Wuhan in China, on December 2019. WHO declared ‘acute respiratory syndrome COVID-19 (SARS Co-2)’as a pandemic on March 12, 2020. Corona viruses are enveloped positive single stranded RNA viruses, causing severe acute respiratory syndrome in the infected individuals. The risk of getting infected by covid-19 is similar in all the individuals across the nation. But the outcome of the infection varies from one individual to another, depending on the comorbidities present in them. The most vulnerable group of patients in respect to severity of outcome of the infection are the once with unbalanced heath conditions like age (>65 years), immune-compromised, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, increased insulin resistance, cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, vasculitis(vascular inflammation)and obesity. It is now a public knowledge that diabetes and obesity are a risk factor for any individual as these conditions can exacerbate the manifestations of COVID-19 infections thus increasing the severity of the condition, that may require hospitalization of the patient, later may even require intensive care unit or/and mechanical ventilation, with increased risk of mortality rates. In diabetic patients it is mainly due to failure in controlling the glucose levels and the risk of ketoacidosis. In patients with obesity lipid peroxidase creates reactive lipid aldehydes leading to poor prognosis.