Newly diagnosed diabetes is associated with a higher risk of mortality than known diabetes in hospitalized patients with COVID‐19

Li, Huiqing; Tian, Shenghua; Chen, Ting; Cui, Zhenhai; Shi, Ningjie; Zhong, Xueyu; Qiu, Kangli; Zhang, Jiaoyue; Zeng, Tianshu; Chen, Lulu; Zheng, Juan

CONTEXT: No studies evaluated the prospective association between hyperglycemia assessed by laboratory measurements and the risk of mortality among patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate the association between different degrees of hyperglycemia and the risk of all‐cause mortality among hospitalized patients with COVID‐19. DESIGN: A retrospective study. SETTING: Union Hospital in Wuhan, China. PARTICIPANTS: 453 patients were admitted to the hospital with laboratory‐confirmed SARS‐Cov‐2 infection from January 22, 2020 to March 17, 2020. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Patients were classified into four categories: normal glucose, hyperglycemia (fasting glucose 5.6–6.9 mmol/L and/or HbA1c 5.7–6.4%), newly diagnosed diabetes (fasting glucose ≥7 mmol/L and/or HbA1c ≥6.5%), and known diabetes. The major outcomes included in‐hospital mortality, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). RESULTS: Patients with newly diagnosed diabetes had the highest percentage to be admitted to the ICU (11.7%) and require IMV (11.7%), followed by patients with known diabetes (4.1%; 9.2%) and patients with hyperglycemia (6.2%; 4.7%), compared with patients with normal glucose (1.5%; 2.3%), respectively. The multivariable‐adjusted hazard ratios of mortality among COVID‐19 patients with normal glucose, hyperglycemia, newly diagnosed diabetes, and known diabetes were 1.00, 3.29 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.65–16.6), 9.42 (95% CI 2.18–40.7), and 4.63 (95% CI 1.02–21.0), respectively. CONCLUSION: We firstly showed that COVID‐19 patients with newly diagnosed diabetes had the highest risk of all‐cause mortality compared with COVID‐19 patients with known diabetes, hyperglycemia and normal glucose. Patients with COVID‐19 need to be under surveillance for blood glucose screening. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.