With each passing day, scientists learn more about the coronavirus pandemic hitting the whole world for over a year now. As some searchers are focusing on vaccines and effective treatments against the disease, others try to understand the reasons why some people develop severe Covid-19 more than others.
According to a study published this Wednesday April 14, 2021 in the British Journal of Sports Medicines, the lack of physical exercise is said to be one of the risk factors leading to severe disease.
According to scientists behind this new study, physical inactivity is indeed associated to a higher risk for severe Covid-19. To make it to such conclusions, searchers based their study on around 50,000 patients infected in the United States between January and October 2020. According to this study, people infected by Covid-19 who did not work out for two years prior to the pandemic were more likely to get hospitalized and be in intensive care units and die over the disease than patients who followed physical exercise recommendations.
In their study, searchers state that physical inactivity was the stronger risk factors identified except for old age and history of organ transplant. Furthermore, scientists report that “physical inactivity was the strongest risk factor across all outcomes” compared with other risk factors such as smoking, overweight, and even cardiovascular diseases, yet saying they can not prove a direct relationship between lack of physical exercise and the results.
