Number of deaths in Asians

[Orangeblossom78]

I wondered if anyone else had noticed there seems to be a higher rate in Asians for example in the doctors and nurse recently also the 13 year old boy and wondered about the reasons for this. Please don't say this is being 'racist' as it isn't... I just wondered if any others had noticed this too.

I think it’s too early for any meaningful statistics on ethnicity and any bias is more likely to be a demographic thing.

South Asians are at higher risk for many things medically. Take cardiovascular disease:

'In the UK, CVD is more common in people of south Asian and an African or Caribbean background.'

'This is because people from these backgrounds are more likely to have other risk factors for CVD, such as high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes.'

www.nhs.uk/conditions/cardiovascular-disease/

Possibly could be more viral load as in health professional perhaps. I know someone mentioned in another thread, asians can have a sensitivity to diabetes at a lower BMI than others so wondered if that may have been a link, if COVID is worse in those who have diabetes for example, but of course is just speculation.

I wondered about this too, after a post went round twitter naming and thanking the first three doctors to have sadly died from corona virus. Asian doctors only account for about 12% of the doctors in Britain.

I believe diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, heart disease etc are all bad news from a COVID-19 survivability standpoint.

The nurse and young boy who died are said to have had no underlying health issues.

OK this is interesting. Lancet journal here

"...the genetic predisposition for an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, which might be due to ACE2 polymorphisms that have been linked to diabetes mellitus, cerebral stroke, and hypertension, specifically in Asian populations"

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30116-8/fulltext

Don’t know about the doctors, but there wasn’t any mention of it in the articles I’ve read about their passing.

When I saw the news this morning that had photos of all the NHS staff who had died from COVID i was shocked that not one was white.

I wonder whether the fact that Asian populations are more likely to live in multi-generational households might become a factor in time too?

They think that might be why Italy has been hit so badly - lots of multi-generational households.

My worry was that either they are higher risk of severe symptoms or that they aren’t getting the same level of care as white nhs staff.
Which although there is lots of reports out at the moment of black and Asian people getting less quality care in general I would really hope that wouldn’t be the case with this and everyone is treated the same

There seems to be quite a bit written about this ACE2 mainly about things like blood pressure meds and how using them is linked, all quite complex but does seem to be some links as in the journal article. Bit worrying

I had a look on the ACE2 stuff back when it was still apparently just in China, but I couldn’t seem to find any firm evidence at the time and I haven’t looked into it again.

"Human pathogenic coronaviruses (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus [SARS-CoV] and SARS-CoV-2) bind to their target cells through angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which is expressed by epithelial cells of the lung, intestine, kidney, and blood vessels.4 The expression of ACE2 is substantially increased in patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, who are treated with ACE inhibitors and angiotensin II type-I receptor blockers (ARBs).4 Hypertension is also treated with ACE inhibitors and ARBs, which results in an upregulation of ACE2.5 ACE2 can also be increased by thiazolidinediones and ibuprofen. These data suggest that ACE2 expression is increased in diabetes and treatment with ACE inhibitors and ARBs increases ACE2 expression. Consequently, the increased expression of ACE2 would facilitate infection with COVID-19. We therefore hypothesise that diabetes and hypertension treatment with ACE2-stimulating drugs increases the risk of developing severe and fatal COVID-19'

"If this hypothesis were to be confirmed, it could lead to a conflict regarding treatment because ACE2 reduces inflammation and has been suggested as a potential new therapy for inflammatory lung diseases, cancer, diabetes, and hypertension. A further aspect that should be investigated is the genetic predisposition for an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, which might be due to ACE2 polymorphisms that have been linked to diabetes mellitus, cerebral stroke, and hypertension, specifically in Asian populations. Summarising this information, the sensitivity of an individual might result from a combination of both therapy and ACE2 polymorphism."

Cut and paste from the Lancet above

There has been research which suggests blood group might be a risk factor - specifically, blood group A being higher risk. The research hasn't been validated yet, but there might be other genetic factors which we don't know about that influence the severity of infection.

It's all so new surely must be some speculation at this stage I suppose..

Lack of vitamin D in darker skinned populations after long dark winter.
So many heavy populated southern hemisphere countries have very few mortalities compared to European winter countries?
Lots of evidence that vitamin D / sunlight is a factor for illness and immunity.
Just a theory but why not extreme outbreaks in India/ Thailand etc with multiple visitors?
I have looked at medical research online as an interested amateur but I am taking high doses at the moment if Vitamin D until the sun comes out in my garden

That thought crossed my mind too @poppymatilda.

Outside London, the next highest region for cases in UK is the West Midlands (well it was yesterday, I haven't checked today).
Within the West Mids, the places most affected are Birmingham and Wolverhampton and both these areas have a large Asian population.

Multi-generational households must be a factor surely, given that we're being told to stay away from the over 70's to keep them safe.
That's not easy to do if they live with you.

I've seen a few hints that vitamin D deficiency may be an issue as well
(caveat there's a lot of nonsense about vitamins out there so its hard to know what's real, but in the UK South Asians are signifcantly more likely than Whites to be deficient in vitamin D ).

OP has seen a bunch of non-white people of very different races, ethnicities, and backgrounds die and tried to find a pattern.

The truth is more nuanced than that. I would have expected a lot more younger Indian and Pakistani people to die (particularly in Bradford and Leicester) as we often develop age related heart and blood pressure conditions quicker (and there is a lot of smoking in our communities - shisha and cigarettes but also weed) but that is not the case in the UK. In fact, according to the limited studies available younger fatalities have tended to be of other races here.

India and China will be a different ball game due to lack of medical care - like the US healthcare

Yes, having olive skin myself and vitamin D deficiency in the past I was told those with darker skin types need more of it and more time in the sin to make it. (to the right levels).

The main UK hotspots are in boroughs and cities with large Asian populations. You are probably more likely to find a large number of Asian doctors in Birmingham than in Truro.

I was talking about the recent UK cases - yes it was just from observation - not sure about Bradford area and how many cases there have been there sorry. Think more London / rest of UK perhaps

I thought there was large amount of cases in places like South Wales as well

It’s too early to say. I hope they are tracking all of it though- age, sex, race, health conditions, etc.