Clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infected people with diabetes who developed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Brazil.

Abstract

Objective: Compare the clinical outcomes of people with and without Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM2), infected by SARS-CoV-2, who developed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Brazil. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study. The research was carried out by analyzing the compulsory notification form Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome of hospitalized patients, obtained from DATASUS. Type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic men and women infected with SARS-CoV-2 and notified as SARS in the period February 2020 to May 2021 were analyzed. The outcomes were identified as: hospitalization, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission, and death. The percentage of each outcome among diabetic patients was compared with that of the infected non-diabetic patients in the same period using the Chi-square test, with a 95% confidence interval. Results: From a total of 384,805 patients, 111,046 were diabetic and 273,759 non-diabetic. Among the diabetic patients, 98.2% were hospitalized, 43.7% were admitted to the ICU, and 44.6% died. While among non-diabetics, 97.3% required hospitalization, 37.2% were admitted to the ICU, and 35.7% died. After the analysis with the Chi-square test, a statistically significant difference was found between the groups (p<0.001). Conclusion: The presence of DM2 was associated with a worse prognosis for COVID-19 compared to people without DM2, in the Brazilian population. However, further studies are needed to establish causality and elucidate the pathophysiology of this association.