Severity of COVID-19 infection in patients with COVID-19 combined with diabetes

Abstract

Abstract Purpose This study aimed to analyse the correlation between blood glucose control and the severity of COVID-19 infection in patients with diabetes. Methods Clinical and imaging data of a total of 146 patients with diabetes combined with COVID-19 who visited our hospital between December 2022 and January 2023 were retrospectively collected. The patients were divided into the ‘good blood glucose control’ group and the ‘poor blood glucose control’ group based on an assessment of their blood glucose control. The clinical data, computed tomography (CT) appearance and score and the severity of COVID-19 infection of the two groups were compared, with the severity of COVID-19 infection being the dependent variable to analyse other influencing factors. Results The group with poor blood glucose control showed a higher lobar involvement degree and total CT severity score (CTSS) than the group with good blood glucose control (13.30 ± 5.25 vs. 10.38 ± 4.84, p 0.05). The area under the curve (AUC) of CTSS prediction of critical COVID-19 was 0.895 with sensitivity of 79.3% and specificity of 88.1% when the threshold value is 12. Conclusion Blood glucose control is significantly correlated with the CTSS; the higher the blood glucose is, the more severe the lung manifestation. The CTSS can also be used to evaluate and predict the clinical severity of COVID-19.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• Diabetes
• Poor blood glucose control
• Tomography
• Computed tomography severity score