278 - COVID-19 Research Update: Obesity and COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2021
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Josh Sharfstein talks with Hopkins researchers who break down three research papers looking at the relationship between obesity and COVID-19. Lauren Peetluk, a graduate student from Vanderbilt University, talks about a study published early in the pandemic looking at obesity and mortality from COVID-19. Dr. Sabina Haberlen talks about a CDC paper on the relationship between BMI and COVID-19 severity and death. Dr. Nikolas Wada talks about a paper that teases out the relationship between obesity and COVID from other possible factors like diabetes and coronary artery disease. All three researchers are part of the Hopkins novel coronavirus research consortium, with many summaries of new studies available at http://ncrc.jhsph.edu.
KEYWORDS: vaccine distribution; comorbidities
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.7 | at jhh.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.3 | Today, the topic is the relationship between obesity and COVID-19. |
| 0:51.5 | I hear from three scientists who are part of the novel coronavirus research |
| 0:55.4 | compendium at Johns Hopkins, which is online at ncrc.jhsph.edu. First up is Lauren Petluck, a graduate |
| 1:05.1 | student in epidemiology at Vanderbilt, who explains a study published early in the pandemic |
| 1:10.7 | in the annals of internal |
| 1:12.1 | medicine. She is followed by Dr. Sabina Haberlin, a faculty member in epidemiology here at |
| 1:18.2 | Johns Hopkins, who tells me about a recent study on obesity and COVID published by the CDC. |
| 1:26.1 | Finally, Dr. Nicholas Wada describes an innovative study in PLOS medicine that seeks to tease out the relationship |
| 1:33.3 | between obesity on the one hand and COVID-19 on the other, distinguishing the effect of obesity from other related factors like diabetes. |
| 1:43.3 | Let's listen. |
| 1:45.4 | Lauren, thanks so much for joining public health on call. Please tell me about the paper that |
| 1:50.2 | you've been studying. Hey, Josh, I'm really happy to be here. So today I'm going to be talking a bit |
| 1:55.4 | about a paper that looks at obesity and mortality among patients who were diagnosed with COVID. |
| 2:00.8 | And I will say this is a full |
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