Diabetes increases the mortality of patients with COVID-19: a meta-analysis

• Published in: Acta diabetologica Vol. 58; no. 2; pp. 139 - 144
• Main Authors: Wu, Zeng-hong, Tang, Yun, Cheng, Qing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Milan Springer Milan 01.02.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Blood Glucose - physiology; Cardiovascular diseases; Cardiovascular Diseases - epidemiology; Cardiovascular Diseases - mortality; Cerebrovascular diseases; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - mortality; COVID-19 - pathology; Diabetes; Diabetes Complications - mortality; Diabetes mellitus; Diabetes Mellitus - epidemiology; Diabetes Mellitus - mortality; Humans; Hypertension - epidemiology; Hypertension - mortality; Internal Medicine; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Meta-analysis; Metabolic Diseases; Mortality; Pandemics; Reproducibility of Results; Review; Review Article; Risk Factors; SARS-CoV-2 - physiology; Sensitivity analysis; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Severity of Illness Index; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Diabetes; Meta-analysis
• DOI: 10.1007/s00592-020-01546-0
• ISSN: 0940-5429; 1432-5233

Aims Nowadays, the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an emerging, rapidly evolving situation. Complications such as hypertension, diabetes, COPD, cardiovascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease are major risk factors for patients with COVID-19. Methods No meta-analysis has explored if or not diabetes related to mortality of patients with COVID-19. Therefore, this meta-analysis first aims to explore the possible clinical mortality between diabetes and COVID-19, analyze if diabetes patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 are exposed to the worst clinical prognostic risk, and to evaluate the reliability of the evidence. Results Our results showed a close relationship between diabetes and mortality of COVID-19, with a pooled OR of 1.75 (95% CI 1.31–2.36; P  = 0.0002). The pooled data were calculated with the fixed effects model (FEM) as no heterogeneity appeared in the studies. Sensitivity analysis showed that after omitting any single study or converting a random effect model to FEM, the main results still held. Conclusions Our meta-analysis showed that diabetes increases the mortality of patients with COVID-19. These results indicated the disturbance of blood glucose in the COVID-19 patients. More importantly, this meta-analysis grades the reliability of evidence for further basic and clinical research into the diabetes dysfunction in COVID-19 patients.