Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Oct;24(19):11038-11045.
doi: 10.1111/jcmm.15599. Epub 2020 Aug 20.

Diseases with health disparities as drivers of COVID-19 outcome

John T Moore  1 , William Pilkington  2 , Deepak Kumar  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Diseases with health disparities as drivers of COVID-19 outcome

John T Moore et al. J Cell Mol Med. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced our society to come face to face with complex issues that were once theoretical but are now being played out in real time. As data from the pandemic accumulates, it is clear that COVID-19 is impacting some parts of society more than others. Unfortunately, there is an almost complete overlap between COVID-19 risk factors and conditions that are already represented as health disparities, such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease and immune disorders. In this review, we discuss our current understanding of the physiological and pathophysiological pathways that link these diseases to COVID-19 outcome. An increased awareness of the factors underlying this issue, both societal and medical, is needed to understand the long-term implications and possible solutions needed going forward.

Keywords: COVID-19; health disparities; risk factors.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors confirm that there are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Date from The COVID‐19 Racial Data Tracker (June 2020) showing (A) Percentage of the US population that is African American (AA) vs the percentage of COVID‐19 associated deaths in AA vs the non‐AA population (compiled from cases where ethnicity is known), and (B) predominant ethic group in top 10 countries in US for confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infections vs COVID‐19 deaths. https://covidtracking.com/race
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/2.... Accessed May 11,2020
    1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00154-w. Accessed May 11,2020
    1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html. Accessed May 11,2020
    1. Sommer P, Lukovic E, Fagley E, et al. Initial clinical impressions of the critical care of COVID‐19 patients in Seattle, New York City, and Chicago. Anesth Analg. 2020;131(1):55‐60. - PMC - PubMed
    1. van Dorp L, Acman M, Richard D, et al. Emergence of genomic diversity and recurrent mutations in SARS‐CoV‐2. Infect Genet Evol. 2020;83:104351. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types