Insulin Treatment Increased Fatality in COVID-19 Patients with Diabetes (preprint)

ABSTRACT

Background: COVID-19 epidemic continues to spread rapidly around the world, causing severe multi-organ injury and high mortality in a subset of patients. Individuals with diabetes mellitus are at a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and worse outcomes than the general population without diabetes. While glucose control was observed to be associated with attenuated mortality, limited evidence is available to determine whether glucose control by insulin was beneficial for COVID-19 patients with diabetes.Methods: This retrospective study focused on a cohort of 689 COVID-19 patients from Wuhan, China, diagnosed with diabetes, and assessed the clinical outcomes associated with insulin treatment. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and proportional Cox regression were employed to analyze the influence of insulin treatment on all cause death.Results: Among the 689 diabetic patients infected with COVID-19, 106 patients died (fatality was 15.4%). The fatality of COVID-19 patients with diabetes treated with insulin was significantly higher than those without insulin treatment (27.2% vs. 3.5%, p < 0.001). The HR was 6.57 (95% CI 3.09 to 13.99; p < 0.001) after adjustment for age, gender, coronary heart disease, COPD, chronic kidney disease, pulse, respiratory rate, SpO2, lymphocyte count, albumin, NT-proBNP and glucose. Further survival analysis in several subgroups and critically ill group showed the similar effect of insulin on adverse outcome in COVID-19 patients with diabetes.Conclusion: According to this retrospective study, insulin treatment increases the mortality in COVID-19 patients with diabetes. Thus, close observation especially glucose and vital signs monitoring are very important when COVID-19 patients with diabetes treated with insulin.Funding: This work was supported in part by projects from Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2020YFC0844500), Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31130031), Emergency project fund of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 2020YJFK0105) and Chinese Academy of Engineering and Ma Yun Foundation (No. 2020-CMKYGG-05). Conflict of Interest The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ethical Approval This study was approved by the institutional review board of Tongji Hospital (IRBID TJ-IRB20200229). The written informed consent was waived by the Ethics Committee because of the retrospective and anonymous nature of the data.