Risk Factors for Mortality of COVID-19 Patients

Abstract BackgroundLethality rates of COVID-19 are so different between countries and continents. This lethality seems to be very low in Africa and Asia, but exceedingly high in western Europe and North America. Many factors could have a role in this disparity such as comorbidities. Advanced age, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer were the most frequently cited in the reported COVID-19 data. The main objective was to analyze and evaluate the association between the COVID-19 mortality and the mentioned factors in 164 countries. MethodsThe Data of COVID-19 deaths, latitude degrees, population age distribution, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes and cancer were extracted from different online sources. For the statistical analysis, we used Spearman to measure the correlation coefficient between numbers of deaths and the mentioned factors until June 29, 2020. ResultsThe correlation between COVID-19 mortality and latitude, high age, obesity, CVD and number of cancer patients per 100,000 is significant at 0.01 level with r = 0.489, r=0.511, r=0.489, r=0.561 and r=0.536 respectively. The correlation between the number of deaths and diabetes is less strong than the previous ones, and the correlation coefficient is r= 0.154. ConclusionThe great lethality of COVID-19 in western Europe and North America can be explained in part by the highest of age, cancer and CVD percentage in these regions. It seems also plausible that the increased obesity in the USA and vitamin D deficiency in Europe may contribute to increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths.