Patients with abnormally high blood sugar levels are more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 — about 41% versus 16%. Those same patients are also more likely to be admitted to intensive care and more likely to need a ventilator, according to a new study.
Even if patients don’t have diabetes, the findings show that just having high blood sugar levels will increase their COVID risks. The study showed that among more than 11,300 noncritically ill adults with COVID-19 who were hospitalized in Spain between March and the end of May 2020, 1 in 5 died while hospitalized.
It is still unknown why high blood sugar is associated with a higher risk of death in COVID-19 patients, but researchers say hospitalized COVID patients should be screened for hyperglycemia.
"Screening for hyperglycemia in patients without diabetes and early treatment should be mandatory in the management of patients hospitalized with COVID-19," said study coordinator Dr. Francisco Javier Carrasco-Sánchez, an internal medicine physician at Juan Ramon Jimenez University Hospital in Huelva, Spain.
Source: Drugs.com December 4, 2020