High blood sugar may worsen outcomes for hospitalized COVID patients, study finds
A study of more than 700 COVID-19 patients admitted to a New York hospital found that people who have high blood sugar, with or without diabetes, face worse outcomes from the disease — including intensive care unit admission, need for mechanical ventilation, kidney injury and death — than those with normal blood sugar levels.
While past papers have identified high blood sugar, medically known as hyperglycemia — which affects people with diabetes — as a risk factor for severe COVID-19, the researchers of the new study say theirs is among the first to include a predominantly Black population, which has dealt with higher infection and death rates, as well as employment and housing disparities during the pandemic.
It’s unclear if COVID-19 causes people’s blood sugar to spike, or if the condition is the reason why the disease progresses enough to warrant severe outcomes, but the study suggests health care workers consistently monitor hospitalized COVID-19 patients with high blood sugar to prevent worse outcomes.
The researchers will present their results this week at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting.
“COVID-19 patients presenting to the hospital with hyperglycemia require closer observation, as they are likely to require more aggressive therapies,” the study’s lead investigator, Dr. Samara Skwiersky, an internal medicine resident physician at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, said in a statement. “The results from our study reiterate the importance of regularly monitoring blood glucose in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, even without a prior diagnosis of diabetes.”
A total of 708 adults with COVID-19 admitted to the SUNY Downstate Medical Center were included in the study. About 90% of the participants were Black, about half were men, and 54% had a history of either type 1 or type 2 diabetes.
The team divided patients into groups by glucose level based on guidelines for hospitalized patients with diabetes: one group for adults with blood sugar levels less than 140 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) and another for those with blood sugar levels less than 180 mg/dL.
People who did not have diabetes and had blood sugar levels that exceeded 140 mg/dL faced a two-fold higher risk of dying from COVID-19, 3.5-fold higher risk of ICU admission and 2.3-fold higher risk of needing mechanical ventilation and experiencing kidney injury.
For those whose blood sugar levels surpassed 180 mg/dL, risk of coronavirus-related death, ICU admission and odds of mechanical ventilation increased four-fold, nearly three-fold and 2.7-fold, respectively.
Similar trajectories were seen among patients with COVID-19 and diabetes, although for those with blood sugar levels over 180 mg/dL, their risk of death was two times lower than that of people without diabetes with the same blood sugar levels.
High blood sugar is not considered one of the medical conditions that puts people at greater risk for severe COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but diabetes is listed along with cancer, Down syndrome, coronary artery disease and other conditions.
This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 12:09 PM with the headline "High blood sugar may worsen outcomes for hospitalized COVID patients, study finds."
