Could obesity lead to greater risk for Covid-19 patients?

A team of scientists from the US, Germany and Switzerland believe that the coronavirus "lives" in human fatty tissue, thereby causing infections and leading to many other complications.

To conduct their experiments, the experts collected adipose tissue from obese people who had never been infected with Covid-19 and from obese patients who died from Covid-19.

Experimental results showed that Covid-19 was found in the lungs, heart, internal organs and subcutaneous adipose tissue of obese patients who died of Covid-19. The highest concentration of coronavirus is in the lungs and the second most abundant site is adipose tissue.

According to a research team from Stanford University (USA), "Our results clearly show the presence of coronavirus in macrophages (cells in the first line of defense of the immune system to protect against cancer). body from pathogens) and in fat cells”.

Commenting on the research results, the head of the Moscow State University laboratory argued, "Coronavirus can hide in fatty tissues, but this cannot be confirmed yet.

"It should be noted that the authors of the above study examined the tissues of people who died of Covid. So it is very likely that these patients had severe immune system deficiencies, allowing the virus to spread throughout the world. To confirm this hypothesis, it is necessary to examine the fatty tissue of a living person infected with Covid-19."

Sharing more about the correlation between obese patients with Covid-19, Dean of the Department of Endocrinology at Pirogov National Research Medical University, Russia informed, "an unexpected feature of coronavirus for obese people." This virus is able to spread fairly quickly from the affected organs into the surrounding fatty tissue. As a result, the patient will get worse and the vital organs of the body will be damaged. Such people may still be carriers and need to stay in the hospital longer or self-isolate.”

However, experts say that the risk of developing a serious Covid-19 epidemic can come not only to obese people but also to those with belly fat. Abdominal obesity is when the waist circumference (i.e. the deposition of fat in the abdominal cavity) will be higher than normal. If the waist circumference in men is more than 94 cm and in women is more than 80 cm, it is called abdominal obesity.

Accordingly, for people with abdominal obesity, the ventilation capacity of the lungs is impaired, leading to more severe respiratory failure when pneumonia is present. In addition, abdominal obesity is also characterized by dyslipidemia - the accumulation of "bad" cholesterol segments, which contribute to the appearance of free radicals that damage lung tissue. The inflammatory process in these patients is more severe.

In the future, experts will study the mechanism of entry of the coronavirus into fat cells.