Covid-19 patients who are not diabetic but have abnormally high blood sugar level are on the higher side of the risk of death as well as severe complications due to the infection, according to a study.

The study conducted by Dr Yang Jin and his team from the Union Hospital and Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China, has been published in the recent edition of Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]).

A number of studies have shown links between diabetes and poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients.

However, Dr Jin and his team showed direct correlation between fasting blood glucose (FBG) level at admission to hospital and clinical outcomes of Covid-19 patients without diagnosed diabetes.

The retrospective study assessed all consecutive Covid-19 patients with a known outcome at 28-days and FBG measurement at admission from 24 January 2020 to 10 February 2020 in two hospitals based in Wuhan, China.

Demographic and clinical data, 28-day outcomes, in-hospital complications and CRB-65 scores of COVID-19 patients in the two hospitals were analysed. The CRB-65 score is an effective measure for assessing the severity of pneumonia and is based on four indicators: level of confusion, respiratory rate (over 30 breaths per min), systolic blood pressure (90 mmHg or less) or diastolic blood pressure (60 mmHg or less), and age (65 years or over), as per the study.

A total of 605 Covid-19 patients were enrolled, including 114 who died in hospital. Of which 208 (34 per cent) had one or more underlying conditions (but not diagnosed diabetes), of which high blood pressure was the most common. Almost one third (29 per cent) of patients fell into the highest category of FBG on admission which if found consistently would result in a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.

The results showed that patients in the highest FBG group were 2.3 times more likely to die than those in the lowest, a statistically significant result.

The data also showed that men were 75 per cent more likely to die than women.

The authors suggested that during a pandemic of Covid-19, measuring fasting blood glucose can facilitate the assessment of prognosis and early intervention of hyperglycaemia to help improve the overall outcomes in treatment of the infection.