Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Jul 15, 2022; 13(7): 543-552
Published online Jul 15, 2022. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v13.i7.543
Elevated levels of fructosamine are independently associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection: A 12-mo follow-up study
Xiao-Yan Huang, Li-Juan Yang, Xiang Hu, Xing-Xing Zhang, Xiao Gu, Lin-Jia Du, Zhi-Ying He, Xue-Jiang Gu
Xiao-Yan Huang, Li-Juan Yang, Xiang Hu, Xing-Xing Zhang, Xiao Gu, Lin-Jia Du, Zhi-Ying He, Xue-Jiang Gu, Department of Endocrine and Metabolic Disease, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
Xiao-Yan Huang, Department of Endocrine and Metabolic Disease, Yueqing People’s Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325600, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Gu XJ was the guarantor and designed the study; Huang XY and Hu X participated in the acquisition, analysis, interpretation of the data, and drafted the initial manuscript; Yang LY, Zhang XX, Gu X, Du LJ, and He ZY revised the article critically for important intellectual content.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Yueqing People’s Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University (No. YQYY202100033).
Informed consent statement: The informed consent statement was waived.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Xue-Jiang Gu, MMed, Chief Doctor, Department of Endocrine and Metabolic Disease, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Shangcai Village, Nanbaixiang Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou 325000, Zhejiang Province, China. guxuejiang@wmu.edu.cn
Received: December 8, 2021
Peer-review started: December 8, 2021
First decision: April 18, 2022
Revised: April 29, 2022
Accepted: June 13, 2022
Article in press: June 13, 2022
Published online: July 15, 2022
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Diabetes is a risk factor for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which results in increased severity and mortality but has no relationship with COVID-19 reinfection. No study has reported the relationship between COVID-19 reinfection and blood levels of fructosamine (FMN). The present study for the first time reported this relationship.

Research motivation

We mainly investigate the relationship between blood levels of FMN and COVID-19 reinfection.

Research objectives

We found that FMN levels may influence the prognosis of patients infected with COVID-19, which highlight that the hospitalization patients with elevated levels of FMN should be cautiously monitored at post discharge.

Research methods

A total of 146 inpatients from the designated isolation hospital for COVID-19 patients, who were satisfied based on the diagnostic criteria and treatment protocol of COVID-19 (Fifth edition). The study cohort was divided into two groups based on FMN levels, elevated FMN was defined as levels higher than its upper tertile value, with the average follow-up period being one year. Cox regression was used to determine the hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals for the positive reinfection across the tertiles of FMN levels. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to determine the cumulative survival rate in the patients with higher than the top tertiles of FMN levels compared with those with non-elevated levels, tested using log-rank.

Research results

We found that patients with elevated FMN levels were older than the non-elevated FMN group. Elevated FMN levels were positively associated with reinfection rate as well as HR for reinfection, while the cumulative disease-free survival rate was lower for patients in the elevated FMN group. These results demonstrate that FMN levels may influence the prognosis of patients infected with COVID-19.

Research conclusions

Elevated levels of FMN are independently associated with COVID-19 reinfection, which highlight that the COVID-19 patients with elevated levels of FMN should be followed up closely to monitor reinfection.

Research perspectives

Additional multicenter, hemoglobin A1c data available studies using larger patient cohorts should be performed to validate our findings.