Zeitschrift für Ernährung und Diätetik

Abstrakt

Obesity-Related Inflammation and Covid-19 Prognosis: Is the White Adipose the Villain?

Joanna Correia-Lima

The emergence novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) has become a worldwide pandemic health threat, causing severe respiratory syndrome in humans. COVID-19 effects, which were first observed in the respiratory tract, are continuously being found and characterized in different organs, and the disease now considered systemic. Recent studies show COVID-19 to have repercussions in the heart, central nervous system, liver, and kidney. Also, it is becoming increasingly clear that the presence of comorbidities is associated with COVID-19 severity and lethality. Thus, the highest fatality rates in infected patients with COVID-19 are related to the presence of diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cancer, and chronic respiratory disease. An unbalanced immune reaction underlines the release of inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-6, IL-1β, IFNγ, inducing the “cytokine storm” in infected patients