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Characteristics of young adults (ages 18-34) hospitalized with COVID

Brian Leiter

This is informative.  Of 63,103 hospitalized patients (April through June of this year), only 5% (3,222) were in the 18-34 age bracket (median age of 28.3).   36.8% were obese, and 24.5% were morbidly obese!  2.7% of the young adults died.  41% of those patients who died or needed mechanical ventilation were morbidly obese. From the discussion:

Morbid obesity, hypertension, and diabetes were common and associated with greater risks of adverse events. Young adults with more than 1 of these conditions faced risks comparable with those observed in middle-aged adults without them. More than half of these patients requiring hospitalization were Black or Hispanic, consistent with prior findings of disproportionate illness severity in these demographic groups.

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4 responses to “Characteristics of young adults (ages 18-34) hospitalized with COVID”

  1. anon

    "The prevalence of obesity was 40.0% among young adults aged 20 to 39 years"
    https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

    Age brackets are not the same, but if numbers are similar in the 18-34 group then simple obesity can't be the risk factor.

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  2. D

    Given that 40% of young adults in the US are obese, I fail to see how the fact that 36.8% of hospitalized patients were obese establishes anything about obesity being a risk factor. If obesity were simply unrelated to the likelihood of being hospitalized due to COVID, wouldn't one expect around 40% of hospitalized patients to be obese? That would mirror the general population.

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  3. David Y.

    I agree that the report cited by BL is most naturally read as saying that 36.8% of patients were obese, including the 24.5% who are morbidly obese. But I wonder whether the authors meant to say that 36.8% were obese, but not morbidly obese (30>BMI>40), and an additional 24.5% were morbidly obese (BMI>40).

    It's odd that, by these numbers, 24.5%/36.8% = almost 2/3 of the patients had BMI>40, and half that many had 30>BMI>40.

    Compare the general population, where according to the source cited in the first comment, 40.0% of 20-34 years olds are obese (BMI>30) and 9.1% are severely obese (BMI>40). The ratio there is 9.1%/40% = a little less than 1/4. (nb. 24.5%/(24.5%+36.8%) is still high at 40.0%.)

    But even if I'm wrong about this error, *morbidly* obese people are substantially overrepresented (24.5% in the study versus 9.1% in the population), and also the focus of BL's quoted passage.

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  4. Brian Leiter

    I agree with David Y’s reading. 61% total are obese, including the quarter that were morbidly obese.

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