Association of obesity and its genetic predisposition with the risk of severe COVID-19: analysis of population-based cohort data. (Special Issue: COVID-19 in metabolism.)

Objective: We aimed to examine the associations of obesity-related traits (body mass index [BMI], central obesity) and their genetic predisposition with the risk of developing severe COVID-19 in a population-based data Research design and methods: We analyzed data from 489,769 adults enrolled in the UK Biobank - a population-based cohort study The exposures of interest are BMI categories and central obesity (e g , larger waist circumference) Using genome-wide genotyping data, we also computed polygenic risk scores (PRSs) that represent an individual's overall genetic risk for each obesity trait The outcome was severe COVID-19, defined by hospitalization for laboratory-confirmed COVID-19