Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, USA.
Sci Rep. 2023 Apr 11;13(1):5895. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-33093-3.
In view of a conspicuous absence of any cross-country study linking obesity and COVID-19 mortality, we conduct an empirical analysis of plausible associations between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of obese in the adult population distributed across 142 countries around the globe. We observe a statistically significant positive association between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of obese in adult populations spanning 142 countries. This association holds across countries belonging to different income groups and is not sensitive to a population's median age, proportion of the elderly, and/or proportion of females. The estimated elasticity of COVID-19 mortality, with respect to the proportion of obese in adult populations, is the highest for the sub-sample of countries that belong to the high-income group. While limits of confidence intervals around the point estimates of these elasticities range between 0.7 and 2.1, on an average, every percentage point increment in the proportion of obese in adult populations contributes to an additional 1.5% points to COVID-19 mortality for high income countries. A positive association, observed between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of the obese in a country's adult population, is robust subject to alterations in the conditioning information set on age, gender, and income.
鉴于目前尚无任何跨国研究将肥胖与 COVID-19 死亡率联系起来，我们对全球 142 个国家的成年人口中肥胖人口比例与 COVID-19 死亡率之间可能存在的关联进行了实证分析。我们观察到 COVID-19 死亡率与成年人口中肥胖人口比例之间存在统计学上显著的正相关关系。这种关联适用于属于不同收入群体的国家，并且不受人口中位数年龄、老年人口比例和/或女性人口比例的影响。对于属于高收入群体的国家子样本，COVID-19 死亡率对成年人口中肥胖人口比例的弹性估计值最高。虽然这些弹性的点估计值的置信区间上限在 0.7 到 2.1 之间，但平均而言，成年人口中肥胖人口比例每增加一个百分点，高收入国家的 COVID-19 死亡率就会增加 1.5 个百分点。在改变年龄、性别和收入等条件信息集的情况下，观察到 COVID-19 死亡率与一个国家成年人口中肥胖人口比例之间存在正相关关系，这是稳健的。
