Worldwide association of lifestyle related factors and COVID-19 mortality
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Background
Several lifestyle related factors such as obesity and diabetes have been identified as risk factors for Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality. The objective of this study was to examine the global association between lifestyle related factors and COVID-19 mortality using data from each individual country.
Methods
The association between prevalence of seven lifestyle related factors (overweight, insufficient physical activity, smoking, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and age over 65) and COVID-19 mortality was assessed by linear and multivariable regression among 186 countries. The cumulative effect of lifestyle related factors on COVID-19 mortality was assessed by dividing countries into four categories according to the number of lifestyle related factors in the upper half range and comparing the mean mortality between groups.
Results
In linear regression, COVID-19 mortality was significantly associated with overweight, insufficient physical activity, hyperlipidemia, and age ≥65. In multivariable regression, overweight and age ≥65 demonstrated significant association with COVID-19 mortality (P = 0.0039, 0.0094). Countries with more risk factors demonstrated greater COVID-19 mortality (P for trend <0.001).
Conclusion
Lifestyle related factors, especially overweight and elderly population, were associated with increased COVID-19 mortality on a global scale. Global effort to reduce burden of lifestyle related factors along with protection and vaccination of these susceptible groups may help reduce COVID-19 mortality.
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.14.21257136: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:The present study has several limitations. The use of different datasets for variables of interest may result in heterogeneous measurements due to variations in data collections, so the reported outcomes may not reflect the true prevalence in real time. …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.14.21257136: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:The present study has several limitations. The use of different datasets for variables of interest may result in heterogeneous measurements due to variations in data collections, so the reported outcomes may not reflect the true prevalence in real time. Second, global investigation of COVID-19 mortality is subjected to differences in testing rate across different countries, in which underdeveloped countries may under report the true infection rates due to limitation of testing capacities. This is why the current paper chose death per million population as the main outcome, instead of case fatality rate or number of infections, as the former outcome depends less on testing rate.[12, 24] We are aware that our analysis is preliminary as the COVID-19 pandemic is still progressing and the infection may not have fully penetrated in some countries, so the mortality rate may change among countries. We plan to perform a follow-up analysis to see whether our results can be verified with the updated death toll after the pandemic has fully passed. Furthermore, COVID-19 associated death rates may be influenced by other factors such as differences in government policies on lockdown, rates of compliance of social distancing and mask wearing by citizens, or host genetic factors that control susceptibility to infections.[25] Lastly, we are aware that while our observational study demonstrated association, this does not mean causation exists between the variables and the outcome.[13] Further s...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
-