Association between comorbidities and death from COVID-19 in different age groups
Background: This new COVID-19 pandemic challenges health systems around the world; therefore, it is extremely important to determine which patients with COVID-19 can evolve to more severe outcomes. Accordingly, we decided to assess the role that comorbidities play in death from COVID-19. Methods: Two age groups (<60 and ≥ 60 years) were defined for analysis. Decision trees were made to identify which comorbidities had the highest fatality rate (FR). Multiple logistic regressions were performed to measure the association between comorbidities and death. Results: A significant difference was found between the FR of <60 group and ≥ 60 group. The most frequent comorbidity were cardiac diseases and diabetes. The combination of comorbidities with the highest FR was diabetes with kidney disease. Combinations of more than two comorbidities presented higher FR. The comorbidities had higher Odd ratios in the younger group than in the older group. Conclusions: Comorbidities seem to play a greater role in death from COVID-19 in the younger group, while in the ≥ 60 group, age seems to be the most important factor. We assigned a score to the comorbidities and their combinations for both age groups to help the health personnel make decisions.