Risk factors of SARS-CoV-2 infection

Abstract

Background: Review is based on the biggest observational population study of all the risk factors of COVID-19 infection. The study was carried out in Royal College of General Practitioners, Oxford, and covering over 4 million of people. Were studied and analyzed risk factors as: age, sex and ethnicity, socioeconomic level, living space dimensions, rural-urban population, body mass index, smoker status, pregnancy, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, ischemic heart disease, chronic respiratory diseases including asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and type 1 and 2 diabetes. Patient variable with malignancy and immunocompromised status was separated due to the small number of patients in each group. Conclusions: By September 2020 more than 28.000 articles had been published related to COVID-19 in less than 9 months, 211 new papers every day. Most of them had small population of the studies. In the investigated sample, it was found that increasing age, male sex, economic deprivation, urban location and black ethnicity were associated with higher chances of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. Active smoking decreased the chance of a positive test. The review covers the most important subjects influencing the development of severe infection outcomes.