Factors Associated with Pneumonia in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19 and the Role of Vaccination

Abstract

Patients with COVID-19 can develop different forms of the illness with more or less severe symptoms. A 2-year retrospective cohort study was conducted to evaluate the factors associated with the development of pneumonia in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 from March 2020 to February 2022. A total of 385 patients (59.0% males) with a mean age of 69.0 ± 16.0 years were included. At hospital admission, 318 patients (82.6%) reported one or more comorbidities, namely 201 (52.2%) subjects were affected by hypertension, 98 (25.5%) type 2 diabetes, 84 (21.8%) obesity, 36 (9.4%) cancer, and 14 (3.6%) suffered from kidney disease and were being treated with dialysis, and 76 (19.7%) resulted in being vaccinated with a higher prevalence of BNT162b2 vaccine (15.0%). Pneumonia was diagnosed in 276 (71.7%) patients. Multivariate regression analysis showed that pneumonia in COVID-19 patients was positively associated with type 2 diabetes (OR 1.81; 95% CI 1.00–3.27), obesity (OR 2.52; 95% CI 1.27–4.98), and negatively with hypertension (OR 0.58; 95% CI 0.35–0.96). Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 resulted in a strongly protective factor against the development of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients (OR 0.49; 95% CI 0.28–0.85).

Keywords

• COVID-19
• pneumonia
• vaccination
• comorbidities
• SARS-CoV-2