ABSTRACT
Background: We aimed to understand how glycaemic levels among COVID-19 patients impact their disease progression and clinical complications. Methods: We enrolled 2,366 COVID-19 patients from Huoshenshan hospital in Wuhan. We stratified the COVID-19 patients into four subgroups by current fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels and their awareness of prior diabetic status, including patients with FBG<6.1mmol/L with no history of diabetes (group 1), patients with FBG<6.1mmol/L with a history of diabetes diagnosed (group 2), patients with FBG≥6.1mmol/L with no history of diabetes (group 3) and patients with FBG≥6.1mmol/L with a history of diabetes diagnosed (group 4). A multivariate cause-specific Cox proportional hazard model was used to assess the associations between FBG levels or prior diabetic status and clinical adversities in COVID-19 patients. Results: COVID-19 patients with higher FBG and unknown diabetes in the past (group 3) are more likely to progress to the severe or critical stage than patients in other groups (severe: 38.46% vs 23.46%-30.70%; critical 7.69% vs 0.61%-3.96%). These patients also have the highest abnormal level of inflammatory parameters, complications, and clinical adversities among all four groups (all p<0.05). On day 21 of hospitalisation, group 3 had a significantly higher risk of ICU admission [14.1% (9.6%-18.6%)] than group 4 [7.0% (3.7%-10.3%)], group 2 [4.0% (0.2%-7.8%)] and group 1 [2.1% (1.4%-2.8%)], (P<0.001). Compared with group 1 who had low FBG, group 3 demonstrated 5 times higher risk of ICU admission events during hospitalisation (HR=5.38, 3.46-8.35, P<0.001), while group 4, where the patients had high FBG and prior diabetes diagnosed, also showed a significantly higher risk (HR=1.99, 1.12-3.52, P=0.019), but to a much lesser extent than in group 3. Conclusion: Our study shows that COVID-19 patients with current high FBG levels but unaware of pre-existing diabetes, or possibly new onset diabetes as a result of COVID-19 infection, have a higher risk of more severe adverse outcomes than those aware of prior diagnosis of diabetes and those with low current FBG levels.