HUGE: Obesity is a major risk factor for #COVID19 mortality in *MEN* but not in women! This is a key reason we study risk factors in men and women separately. Further, obesity even stronger factor in younger and middle age adult men age <60. Meaning. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/health/covid-19-obesity.html

2) “Why some patients sail through the disease and others are felled by it is a question that has bedeviled doctors.” Obesity is one. But is excess weight in and of itself to blame? Or all of the health problems that accompany it, like metabolic disorders and breathing problems?”

3) “A new study points to obesity itself as a culprit. An analysis of thousands at a So Cal health system identified extreme obesity as an independent risk factor for dying among Covid-19 patients — most strikingly, among adults 60 and younger, and particularly among men.”

4) “Among women with the illness, body mass index does not appear to be independently associated with an increased risk of dying at any age, the authors said, possibly because women carry weight differently than do men, who tend to have more visceral and abdominal fat.”

5) “Body mass index is a really important, strong independent risk factor for death among those who are diagnosed with Covid-19,” said Sara Tartof, the study’s first author, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente of Southern California.

6) “But “the impact is not uniform across the population,” she added. “You don’t really see it for the older ages, and we didn’t see it as an important risk for females at any age.”

7) “scientists also wanted to know whether demographics, like age, sex, race or ethnicity, key. While Black and Latino populations have been disproportionately stricken, with hospitalizations & deaths, the study did *NOT* find race or ethnicity to be an independent risk factor.”

8) “The researchers did find extreme obesity to be a strong independent risk factor for worse outcomes. “We’re not saying the disparities don’t exist — we’re teasing apart what’s driving the disparities,” Dr. Tartof said.

9) “We see that racial and ethnic minorities are having more bad outcomes. They are also more likely to be obese, or to have less access to health care, and they’re more likely to have co-morbidities.”

10) “The disparate effect on men who are obese is also understandable because of differences in fat distribution. “If you take a man and woman side by side with the same B.M.I., men is much more likely to have the problems that we think are a component for being more at risk”

11) “Among Covid-19 patients in the study, those with extreme obesity—BMI of >=40—were nearly 3 times greater risk of dying than normal weight. Those w/ BMI of >=45 were >4 times more likely to die than normal weight, with the risk most striking among men & those under 60.”

12) Link to Annals paper of the study. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-3742