Characterization of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and covid-19 in Primary Care

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the characteristics of the population diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (dm2) infected by sars-CoV-2, and to evaluate whether there is an association between dm2 history and covid-19 severity. Methods: non-probabilistic by convenience sampling, information was obtained from the Online Notification System for Epidemiological Surveillance (sinolave) of the Family Medicine Unit No. 28 of the Mexican Institute of Social Security. A total of 1688 confirmed cases of covid-19 were identified and grouped into patients with and without dm2. Bivariate statistical analysis was performed with Excel 2019 and Stata v. 15.1 programs; measures of association were used using Poisson logistic regression and χ² test with statistical significance <0.05. Results: it was observed that, in patients with covid-19 and dm2, the prevalence ratio of severe acute respiratory infection, diagnosis of pneumonia, hospitalization, and death were higher compared to the group without dm2. Conclusion: the frequency, of unfavorable characteristics, was higher in the group of patients with dm2. Health conditions caused by covid-19 reinforce the relevance of an intentional search for undiagnosed diabetic patients, untreated or under treatment with poor glycemic control, in order to avoid major health complications.