Background: The significant number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 suffer from type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), a strong risk factor of atherothrombotic events.

Aims: To evaluate the association of atherothrombotic events with DM in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection.

Methods: 138 patients with DM and 452 patients without DM were followed during hospitalization for COVID-19. Data on atherothrombotic endpoints (myocardial infarction (MI) and ischemic stroke (IS) and mesenteric thrombosis (MT)), clinical and laboratory features was collected. Considering substantial group differences, propensity score matching (PSM) was conducted to equalize patients with and without DM in Stata/MP v.14.2 StataCorp. Sex, age and body mass index (BMI) were chosen as potential covariates-confounders. Further analysis was implemented by Kernel weighting approach with the help of psmatch2 command.

Results: 8 MIs, 8 ISs and 3 MTs occurred during hospitalization, including 9 (6.5%) atherothrombotic events in DM group and 10 (2.2%) in non-DM group (p=0.022). The percentage of women in DM group was 63.4% and in non-DM – 46.9% (p=0.07). Median age in DM-patients was 72 years old and 67 years old for non-DM group (p<0.001). 50% of patients with DM and 1/3 of non-DM had obesity (BMI>=30 kg/m2). After the PSM procedure the prevalence of atherothrombotic events in DM group remained significant. Thus, diabetics had 7 times higher chances of these complications (p=0.005, OR 6.95, CI: 1.78-27.07).

Conclusions: The combination of DM and COVID-19 is extremely dangerous for the development of an atherothrombotic event.

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ISTH Congress Abstracts - https://abstracts.isth.org/abstract/atherothrombotic-events-in-hospitalized-covid-19-patients-are-associated-with-diabetes-mellitus/