The Impact of COVID-19 on Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension: A Retrospective Study

COVID-19 is a pathogenic virus that caused a pandemic outbreak in December 2019. The impact of this virus may be severe in the patients having co-morbidities like diabetes, hypertension, Chronic Kidney Disease, cardiovascular disease, etc.

Aim and Objectives: This study Aims in Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on Diabetic and Hypertensive patients as well as COVID-19 patients without any co-morbidities. Objective of this is to evaluate the association between COVID-19 and its risk factors (diabetes and hypertension) and to evaluate whether the severity of the symptoms in COVID-19 patients is due to comorbidities or past medications.

Methodology: A Retrospective study was conducted in SRM Hospital (Medical Records Department) for a period of 3 Months with the study population 670 at the age group of 25, known case of Diabetes and Hypertension. Cases of Pregnant women are excluded from the study. The patients were grouped into 4 categories 1) control group (patient without any co-morbidities) 2) diabetic patients 3) Hypertensive patient 4) Diabetic+Hypertension patient and studied their prescribing pattern by collecting the past medication history.

Results and Discussion: There is a significant decrease in a lymphocyte in covid-19 Type 2 diabetic patients in our study. These results suggest that different mechanism exists for hypertension and diabetes mellitus as risk factors for covid-19. It is also known that these patients have impaired immune response to many infections [30]. In our retrospective study, we collected 670 covid-19 cases. It consists of 12.5% of diabetic patients and 6.6% of hypertensive patients. This study compared COVID-19 patients without any comorbidity (neither Type 2 diabetes mellitus nor hypertension) with covid- 19 patients with comorbidities (Type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension). COVID-19 patients with T2DM have an increased level of D-dimer compared to non-T2DM patients. Conclusion: Diabetic and hypertensive patients affected with COVID-19 are low in our study. Out of the total study population, only 12.5% are diabetic, 6.56% are hypertensive, and 9.25% were both diabetic and hypertensive. But when comparing in terms of severity, hypertensive and diabetic patients have severe effects than the control patients. In simpler terms, not every person who has diabetes and hypertension are affected with COVID-19, but those who were affected by COVID-19 showed more severity than the patients who don't have any comorbidities