This is a shocker. Including to the authors of the study.
Researchers looked at health records across four hospitals in New York City in March-May 2020. (If you remember, this is when Covid was relatively new in the United States, and NYC was getting slammed).
They found that the #1 risk factor for dying from Covid was Age, followed — not by diabetes, or high blood pressure, or weight — but by a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Those with schizophrenia were 2.7 times more likely to pass away from Covid than those without schizophrenia, and it’s not because they were more likely to be older, or in apparently worse health.
The researchers controlled for all that.
Instead, it appears that schizophrenia itself is a risk factor for higher mortality from Covid.
Why?
Researchers aren’t sure.
But one theory involves the infamous “cytokine storm” — the aggressive and counterproductive immune response that seems to be responsible for many lethal cases of Covid.
Some researchers have speculated that schizophrenia could be associated with immune system abnormalities. In fact, an aggressive immune system could even play a role in the development of schizophrenia.
If that’s the case, then it’s easier to see how schizophrenia might be associated with higher mortality from Covid.
What’s shocking is that schizophrenia was a much bigger risk factor than weight, diabetes, blood pressure, and many of the other common variables we read about.
There’s already a plethora of evidence that schizophrenia is largely a genetic, medical condition (a new study also shows how significant placenta might be), and this is just another example of how physical this “mental” illness is.
Practically-speaking, the authors note that authorities should consider those with schizophrenia a very high risk group and prioritize vaccinations, accordingly.
