Recent research has found that patients that are undergoing treatment for diabetes using the medication metformin could be at a significantly heightened advantage. This is because taking this medication puts them at less risk of death from Covid-19 as compared to those not taking it.
The study appeared in the journal Frontiers in Endocrinology, which also had research that shared ‘African American study participants were disproportionately more likely to contract the virus than white participants.’
What Are the Covid-19 Risk Factors?
One particular area of Covid-19 research has concentrated on what risk factors could cause some individuals to be more likely to contract a SARS-CoV-2 infection or possibly die from the Covid-19 virus if they get it.
Notably, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a novel coronavirus which means that it has many similarities to other types of coronaviruses. At the same time, because it’s so new as the name suggests, there is still so much to learn and figure out about how and why certain individuals are affected more than others, as well as ways to decrease the risks.
New studies have already begun to come out that demonstrate the associations between particular health issues, demographic characteristics, as well as the chances of contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or possibly dying from Covid-19. This research also affirms early observational studies and anecdotal evidence.
The more studies that emerge and provide compelling evidence of these links, the more sound the overall findings. Meanwhile, meta-analysis of the already available scientific literature can also help illustrate the overall picture.
With this present study, researchers wanted to analyze patient characteristics of people within the United States, including a large number of African Americans, associated with Covid-19. Research shows that African Americans are at a higher risk of particular comorbidities, like diabetes, which makes them much more likely to get Covid-19.
The researchers also pointed out that ‘Covid-19 disproportionately affects African Americans, as well as other marginalized groups.’ These were findings that were released in the American Journal of Human Biology in an article entitled Systemic racism, chronic health inequities, and COVID-19: A syndemic in the making?
Including More Than 25,000 Patients
The researchers also conducted a retrospective observational study which included 25,326 participants that had to go through Covid-19 testing between the dates February 25 and June 22, 2020, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital.
The study looked at ‘de-identified electronic health record data’ in order to give them each person’s demographic and medical information.
From the participants, there was a total of 604 people that tested positive for the Covid-19 illness, a number that researchers considered relatively low. They ascertain that this could be due to the number of asymptomatic hospital staff and patients that happen to be having elective procedures that also underwent tests.
In the end, patients that take metformin for type 2 diabetes were found to be less likely to die from Covid-19 than patients that were not taking it. The study also found that there was a disproportionate number of Black people who tested positive for Covid-19. Researchers also explained that a large reason for the numbers could be due to socioeconomic factors, a higher risk of exposure to the virus among African American populations and a limited access to healthcare.
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