ArticleFrontiers in endocrinology2022
Causal associations between body fat accumulation and COVID-19 severity: A Mendelian randomization study.
Article in Frontiers in endocrinology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence and clinical implications of abnormal body composition phenotypes in patients with COVID-19: a systematic review.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2023Pooled it
- Mediterranean diet adherence, body composition, and recovery outcomes in hospitalised COVID-19 patients: a mixed-methods study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Assessing the causal effects of type 2 diabetes and obesity-related traits on COVID-19 severity.Human genomics · 2025Article
- Erector Spinae Muscle to Epicardial Visceral Fat Ratio on Chest CT Predicts the Severity of Coronavirus Disease 2019.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2025Article
- Body Composition of Master Swimmers before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- The causal relationship between COVID-19 and seventeen common digestive diseases: a two-sample, multivariable Mendelian randomization study.Human genomics · 2023Article
- Proteome-wide Mendelian randomization implicates nephronectin as an actionable mediator of the effect of obesity on COVID-19 severity.Nature metabolism · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Previous studies reported associations between obesity measured by body mass index (BMI) and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, BMI is calculated only with height and weight and cannot distinguish between body fat mass and fat-free mass. Thus, it is not clear if one or both of these measures are mediating the relationship between obesity and COVID-19. Here, we used Mendelian randomization (MR) to compare the independent causal relationships of body fat mass and fat-free mass with COVID-19 severity. We identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with body fat mass and fat-free mass in 454,137 and 454,850 individuals of European ancestry from the UK Biobank, respectively. We then performed two-sample MR to ascertain their effects on severe COVID-19 (cases: 4,792; controls: 1,054,664) from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. We found that an increase in body fat mass by one standard deviation was associated with severe COVID-19 (odds ratio (OR)
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