Association between blood glucose levels and other comorbidities with outcomes of COVID-19 patients in a tertiary care hospital

Comorbidities increase the risk of severe COVID-19 and in turn higher mortality. There is a paucity of studies in South India that evaluated the presence of impaired blood glucose levels and other comorbidities as indicators of COVID-19 outcomes. Aim: to study the association of blood glucose levels and other comorbidities with the outcome of COVID-19 patients and its role as a predictive indicator of outcome in COVID-19 patients. Material and methods. A retrospective cross-sectional analysis was conducted on 593 COVID-19 confirmed cases. Demographic data, presence of comorbidities like diabetes mellitus (DM), heart, liver, and renal diseases, laboratory tests like fasting blood sugar (FBS), random blood sugar (RBS), C-reactive protein, etc. were collected. Using two-tailed independent t-test means of continuous variables were compared. Pearson’s Chi square and Fisher’s exact tests were used to evaluate the association of categorical variables with outcomes. Odds ratio (OR), and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to determine the risk factors associated with outcomes. P values <0.05 was considered significant. Results. Majority of the cases were men (66.78%), live (99.4%), and non intensive care unit (non-ICU) (91.6%). Mean (±SD) ages of live and dead cases were 50.93±14.36 and 63.92±14.99 years, respectively. Outcomes of cases were significantly associated with sex (p=0.036), comorbidities (p=0.003), DM (p=0.014), RBS (p=0.042), systemic hypertension (p=0.02), heart disease (p=0.001), etc., and the risk estimates showed ORs as follows: 0.419 (95% CI 0.182–0.967) for sex, 2.403 (95% CI 1.173–4.921) for DM, 1.953 (95% CI 1.014–3.759) for RBS, 2.146 (95% CI 1.117–4.124) for hypertension, etc. Conclusion. The study highlights the significant influence of DM and blood sugar levels on COVID-19 disease outcomes, along with other comorbidities, in South India.