Association between inpatient glycemic variability and COVID-19 mortality: a prospective study

This study aimed to determine the association between glycemic variability (GV) and mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

We prospectively analyzed data from inpatients (> 18 years old) with RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 admitted between March 2020 and July 2021. All patients were hospitalized for more than 48 h and had at least six point-of-care capillary glucose tests obtained three times daily in the pre-prandial period during hospitalization. GV was measured using the glucose standard deviation (SD) and coefficient of variation (CV). ROC curve was adjusted to determine the SD and CV cutoff values associated with mortality (44.7 mg/dL and 27.5%, respectively); values above these were considered indicative of high GV. Logistic regression models were fitted to explore the association between GV and mortality in patients with and without diabetes.

A total of 628 patients were stratified into SD < 44.7 mg/dL (n = 357) versus ≥ 44.7 mg/dL (n = 271) and CV < 27.5% (n = 318) versus ≥ 27.5% (n = 310) groups. After controlling for age, sex, presence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and cardiovascular disease, we found a significant association between high GV and mortality (odds ratio 2.99 [1.88-4.77] for SD and 2.43 [1.54-3.85] for CV; p values < 0.001). The mortality rate was higher with SD ≥ 44.7 mg/dL and CV ≥ 27.5% compared to that with SD < 44.7 mg/dL and CV < 27.5%, regardless of DM (p < 0.001 for all).

High glycemic variability was independently associated with mortality in patients with and without DM, who were hospitalized with COVID-19.