Effects of Diabetes and Blood Glucose on COVID-19 Mortality: A Retrospective Observational Study

  1. Fei Li
  2. Yue Cai
  3. Chao Gao
  4. Lei Zhou
  5. Renjuan Chen
  6. Kan Zhang
  7. Weiqin Li
  8. Ruining Zhang
  9. Xijing Zhang
  10. Duolao Wang
  11. Yi Liu
  12. Ling Tao

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Abstract

To investigate the association of diabetes and blood glucose on mortality of patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

This was a retrospective observational study of all patients with COVID-19 admitted to Huo-Shen-Shan Hospital, Wuhan, China. The hospital was built only for treating COVID-19 and opened on February 5, 2020. The primary endpoint was all-cause mortality during hospitalization.

RESULTS

Among 2877 hospitalized patients, 13.5% (387/2877) had a history of diabetes and 1.9% (56/2877) died in hospital. After adjustment for confounders, patients with diabetes had a 2-fold increase in the hazard of mortality as compared to patients without diabetes (adjusted HR 2.11, 95%CI: 1.16-3.83, P =0.014). The on-admission glucose (per mmol/L≥4mmol/L) was significantly associated with subsequent mortality on COVID-19 (adjusted HR 1.17, 95%CI: 1.10-1.24, P <0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

Diabetes and on-admission glucose (per mmol/L≥4mmol/L) are associated with increased mortality in patients with COVID-19. These data support that blood glucose should be properly controlled for possibly better survival outcome in patients with COVID-19.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.21.20202119: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: This study was approved by the National Health Commission of China and the Institutional Review Board at Huo Shen Shan Hospital (Wuhan, China) (HSSLL025).
    Consent: Written informed consent was waived by the Ethics Committee of the Huo Shen Shan Hospital for patients with emerging infectious diseases.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Analyses were performed using SPSS version 25.0 software (SPSS, Inc, Chicago, Illinois, USA) or R-project (R Foundation, Vienna, Austria).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.21.20202119v1 on medRxiv