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Comment by ulfw | Hacker News Reader

How is illness defined? I don't know anyone who doesn't have some kind of illness. Some major, most very minor.

See Table 1 in the original study: https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

  Ipertensione arteriosa (high blood pressure) 76.1%
  Diabete mellito (diabetes) 35.5%
  Cardiopatia ischemica (heart disease) 33%
  Fibrillazione atriale (atrial fibrillation) 24.5%
  Cancro attivo negli ultimi 5 anni (cancer in past 5 years) 20.3%
  Insufficienza renale cronica (renal failure) 18%
  BPCO (COPD) 13.2%
  Ictus (stroke) 9.6%
  Demenza (dementia) 6.8%
  Epatopatia cronica (chronic liver disease) 3.1%

Note that the most of the people in this study were 70+ years old, and I have no idea what the typical prevalence of these diseases is among 70+ year old Italians.

I haven't been able to figure out from the public statements regarding blood pressure: does the high mortality correspond to treated BP, untreated BP, or both?

I have not seen any studies that broke it down. The studies out of China only had patients self-report other conditions.

High blood pressure, or related to the medication that people with high blood pressure take (ACE inhibitors)?

> 70% of U.S. adults aged 65 years and older have high blood pressure (BP), and the prevalence increases with age.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5639920/

> Diabete mellito (diabetes) 35.5%

I'd be curious to know if their diabetes was well controlled prior to contracting the corona virus or if it was out of control and already a cause of risk. Did the corona virus _cause_ the problem, or just make it worse?

> Il numero medio di patologie osservate in questa popolazione è di 2.7 (mediana 2, Deviazione Standard 1.6)

It seems the above poses another question; is diabetes just confounding other underlying condition(s)?

Further, if most of the patients suffered from type 2 diabetes, it would likely correlate with older age in which case higher fatality rates are to be expected.

I was unable to find this info publicly available, but diabetes being one of the "2+ underlying conditions" seems probable.

There has been some speculation that it may not be the desease itself but the treatment that was the cause of increased risk.

Well some of those are of course found among primarily old people, but as I understand it there are plenty of young people who are in critical condition in Italy as well.

As a type 1 diabetic I'm always a bit disappointed when diabetes is mentioned in an article without specifying the sub type. It makes me wonder if they only encountered type 2 diabetics, or other types as well.

More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.

The original study in Italian:

https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

Translation from Google below. I can't paste a table, but if you scroll down you can see the full list. Looks like primarily heart conditions, hypertension, recent history of cancer, and diabetes.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

High blood pressure is something many people have...

According to the limited info in the article, high blood pressure counts (and accounts for 75% alone).

is high blood pressure usually a separate thing from other issues like heart issues, diabetes etc?

Most people with high blood pressure also have some of those other comorbid conditions. But there are certainly cases of essential hypertension in otherwise healthy patients that have no clear cause.

No--it's saying that 75% of the dead had it, not that it was responsible for 75% of the deaths. High blood pressure is common in the elderly.

I also seriously wonder if it's actually an issue at all, or if it's the drugs used to treat it that put you at higher risk. Properly controlled high blood pressure shouldn't weaken you--but one standard category of drugs is ACE inhibitors and Covid-19 exploits a related path.

Many people are asking the same question, also in the medical community. I wonder when we are going to see some data on this.

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