Diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cardiovascular disease increased the risk of critical or fatal COVID-19.
•
Most prevalent comorbidity amongst COVID-19 patients was hypertension.
•
Strongest risk factor for a poor outcome was underlying cardiovascular disease.
Abstract
Background and aims
This meta-analysis aims to highlight the impact of cardio-metabolic comorbidities on COVID-19 severity and mortality.
Methods
A thorough search on major online databases was done for studies describing the clinical outcomes of COVID-19 patients. We used random-effects model to compute pooled estimates for critical or fatal disease.
Results
A total of 20,475 patients from 33 eligible studies were included. Maximum risk of development of critical or fatal COVID-19 disease was seen in patients with underlying cardiovascular disease [OR: 3.44, 95% CI: 2.65–4.48] followed by chronic lung disease, hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Of the total cases, 64% had one of the four comorbidities with the most prevalent being hypertension with a pooled prevalence of 27%.
Conclusions
Presence of comorbidities like cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease, hypertension and diabetes mellitus led to a higher risk of development of critical or fatal COVID-19 disease, with maximum risk seen with underlying cardiovascular disease.
