UTSA's Hamid Beladi was the lead principal investigator for a study that analyzed associations between COVID-19 mortality and excess weight in nearly 5.5 billion adults.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 — Links between obesity and mortality have become increasingly evident, since the earliest pandemic of the 21st century, leading researchers from The University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to investigate if excess body weight may have been associated with high rates of COVID-19 mortalities around the globe.
Lead principal investigator Hamid Beladi, UTSA’s Janey S. Briscoe Endowed Chair in Business, and his colleagues recently published a novel study in Public Health in Practice analyzing plausible associations of COVID-19 mortality and excess weight in nearly 5.5 billion adults from 154 countries around the world.
To identify potential patterns in data, the researchers employed cutting-edge techniques of statistical analyses.
“The main finding from the analysis is a statistically significant positive association between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of the overweight in adult populations spanning 154 countries,” Beladi said. “This association holds across countries belonging to different income groups and is not sensitive to a population’s median age, proportion of the elderly, and/or proportion of females.”
Beladi added that when the proportion of the overweight people in a country's adult population is one percentage point higher than the proportion of the overweight in a second country's adult population, based on this study, it is reasonable to predict that COVID-19 mortality would be 3.5 percentage points higher in the first country than it would be in the second.
“The average individual is less likely to die from COVID-19 in a country with a relatively low proportion of the overweight in the adult population, all other things being equal, than she or he would be in a country with a relatively high proportion of the overweight in the adult population,” Beladi said.
The study’s authors say that, clinically, excess body weight is related to several comorbidities that can lead to an increasingly severe course of and consequent death from COVID-19. Metabolic disorders, for example, can predispose individuals to a poorer COVID-19 outcome. Since excess body weight can result in a greater volume and longer duration of contagion, it can also lead to a higher level of exposure to COVID-19.
They added that on average, the COVID-19 pandemic has been more fatal for adult populations residing in parts of the world characterized by excess body weight.
The researchers believe their findings can be used to uphold public policy regulations on the food industry, to the extent that it profits off the sales of processed foods, foods high in salt, sugar and saturated fats.
With the death toll from the current pandemic exceeding 4.5 million, the group’s main findings call for immediate and effective regulations that are long overdue, Beladi said.
“Some firms in the food industry have taken the liberty of using the pandemic as a platform for marketing in ways that are all but conducive to restraining body weight,” he explained. “Our observed association, between COVID-19 mortality and the share of the overweight in nearly 5.5 billion adults residing across 154 countries that host almost 7.5 billion people around the globe, serves as a caution against putting more lives at stake.”
UTSA is an urban serving research university that is committed to tackling society’s grand challenges. Its academic and research specialties include health, cybersecurity, fundamental futures and social-economic transformation.
UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.
Students, faculty and staff are invited to join UTSA's delegation at the annual César E. Chávez March for Justice in downtown San Antonio. Free transportation will be provided from the Main and Downtown Campuses, and all university community participants will receive a complimentary commemorative t-shirt (while supplies last)
1310 Guadalupe Street, San Antonio, TexasJoin UTSA Libraries and Museums to learn more about the publishing discounts available for UTSA researchers.
Virtual Event (Zoom)PubMed is an essential database for anyone conducting biomedical or health-related research. This workshop will teach attendees how to effectively navigate this free resource and locate peer-reviewed articles using advanced search features, MeSH subject headings, and Boolean operators.
Virtual Event (Zoom)Join us for a hands-on workshop about the basics of copyright, both in education and as a researcher. We’ll dispel some common copyright myths, differences between copyright law and other intellectual property law, and teach you how to apply a Fair Use checklist to your scholarly work.
Virtual Event (Zoom)In this workshop, we will explore sentiment analysis, a method for identifying feelings in text, whether the tone is positive, negative, or neutral.
Group Spot B, John Peace LibraryThe Urban Bird Project at UTSA will discuss urban bird populations, conservation efforts, and how you can get involved.
JPL Assembly Room (4.04.22,) Main CampusLearn to use the simple but powerful features of EndNote®, a citation management tool. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn to setup an EndNote library, save references and PDFs, and automatically create and edit a bibliography.
Virtual Event ( Zoom)The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education .
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to promoting access for all. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
