Predicting Mortality Due to SARS-CoV-2: A Mechanistic Score Relating Obesity and Diabetes to COVID-19 Outcomes in Mexico

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Abstract

Background

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak poses a challenge to health care systems due to its high complication rates in patients with cardiometabolic diseases. Here, we identify risk factors and propose a clinical score to predict COVID-19 lethality, including specific factors for diabetes and obesity, and its role in improving risk prediction.

Methods

We obtained data of confirmed and negative COVID-19 cases and their demographic and health characteristics from the General Directorate of Epidemiology of the Mexican Ministry of Health. We investigated specific risk factors associated to COVID-19 positivity and mortality and explored the impact of diabetes and obesity on modifying COVID-19-related lethality. Finally, we built a clinical score to predict COVID-19 lethality.

Results

Among the 177 133 subjects at the time of writing this report (May 18, 2020), we observed 51 633 subjects with SARS-CoV-2 and 5,332 deaths. Risk factors for lethality in COVID-19 include early-onset diabetes, obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, advanced age, hypertension, immunosuppression, and chronic kidney disease (CKD); we observed that obesity mediates 49.5% of the effect of diabetes on COVID-19 lethality. Early-onset diabetes conferred an increased risk of hospitalization and obesity conferred an increased risk for intensive care unit admission and intubation. Our predictive score for COVID-19 lethality included age ≥ 65 years, diabetes, early-onset diabetes, obesity, age < 40 years, CKD, hypertension, and immunosuppression and significantly discriminates lethal from non-lethal COVID-19 cases (C-statistic = 0.823).

Conclusions

Here, we propose a mechanistic approach to evaluate the risk for complications and lethality attributable to COVID-19, considering the effect of obesity and diabetes in Mexico. Our score offers a clinical tool for quick determination of high-risk susceptibility patients in a first-contact scenario.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.20.20072223: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our study had some strengths and limitations. First, we analyzed a large dataset which included information on both confirmed positive and negative SARS-CoV-2 cases, which provides a unique opportunity to investigate COVID-19 specific risk factors and develop a predictive model for COVID-19 mortality. Additionally, with the database being nationally-representative it allows for reasonable estimates on the impact of both diabetes and obesity despite the possibility of important regional differences in cardiometabolic risk which might influence risk estimates. A potential limitation of this study is the use of data collected from a sentinel surveillance system model, which is skewed towards investigating high risk cases or only those with specific risk factors which on one hand increases power to detect the effect of comorbidities and on the other hand might not be representative of milder cases of the disease; this is demonstrated in the risk of COVID-19 positivity, which is higher for high risk cases. The updating daily estimates of COVID-19 cases are unlikely to change the direction of the identified associations though it might modify numeric estimates. The role of a risk-gradient related to BMI and increasing degrees of obesity could not be explored with available data and remains as an area to be explored in further studies. Implementation of our proposed model might be useful to allocate prompt responses to high risk cases and improve stratification of disease severity. ...

    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.

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