Impact of Nutritional Habits and Status on the Symptoms Degree with COVID-19

Dietary habits play an important role in the outcome of a variety of different infectious diseases. So, this study aimed to assess the impact of nutritional habits and status on covid-19 symptoms degree in Egyptian patients. Random patients of 336 (130 men and 206 women) aged 12- 76 years, selected from Damietta Governorate (128 from rural and 208 from urban), using an electronic questionnaire, includes preliminary data and nutritional habits measurements in addition to calculate body mass index. The results found that most of the patients were spent from 14 to 21 days in the (COVID-19) infection period, It was noticed that, most of them (56.5%) have poor nutritional habits. According to the relationship between nutritional habits and COVID-19 symptoms degree patients who had poor nutritional habits, the most severe symptoms were fatigue (38.7%), while diarrhea recorded the lowest percentage (5.4%) . Relatively, Body Mass Index (BMI) most of them (36.9%) were overweight, the fewest of the patients (2.3%) were under weight. Notably the relationship between body mass index and symptoms degree with COVID-19 patients with COVID-19 who were overweight had an increase in the severity of symptoms of fatigue by (24.4%), while diarrhea recorded the lowest percentage (5.4%) of symptoms of infection with COVID-19. In conclusion, most of patients have poor nutritional habits, also most of patients who had poor nutritional habits have severe symptoms from fatigue, also a majority of Covid-19 patients are overweight and obese, and they had an increase in the severity of symptoms of fatigue.