A Short Review Article – Role of Nutrition Therapy during COVID – 19

Abstract

Nutrition is a vital element of health. More decisively, nutrition is part of the treatment routine for acute and chronic diseases and applies mainly to conditions for which an etiologic treatment has not yet been discovered. Ebola virus outbreak Western Africa in the 2014–2016 proved that immediate supportive care significantly reduces case mortality rates [1]. This may relate as well to the current COVID-19 pandemic that is disturbing the world. Emerging evidence shows that COVID-19 is associated with negative outcomes in older, comorbid, and hypoalbuminemia patients. These features are not specific to the Chinese residents because they have been testified also in North American patients with COVID-19. When measured together, the emerging literature on patients with COVID-19 indirectly highlights the applicability of nutrition in possibly determining their outcomes. Older age and the presence of comorbid conditions are almost consistently associated with impaired nutritional status and sarcopenia, independently of body mass index. Fascinatingly, a high body mass index score appears to be related to a poor prognosis in comorbid patients with COVID-19, which further points to a possible role of sarcopenic obesity in influencing the outcome [2].