Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Feb 26, 2023; 11(6): 1287-1298
Published online Feb 26, 2023. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v11.i6.1287
Hyperglycemia in COVID-19 infection without diabetes mellitus: Association with inflammatory markers
Harinivaas Shanmugavel Geetha, Garima Singh, Abinesh Sekar, Maya Gogtay, Yuvaraj Singh, George M Abraham, Nitin Trivedi
Harinivaas Shanmugavel Geetha, Garima Singh, Abinesh Sekar, Yuvaraj Singh, George M Abraham, Nitin Trivedi, Department of Internal Medicine, Saint Vincent Hospital, Worcester, MA 01608, United States
Maya Gogtay, Department of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, University of Texas Health, San Antonio, TX 78229, United States
George M Abraham, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, United States
Author contributions: Geetha HS and Trivedi N conceived the idea for the study; Geetha HS, Gogtay M, Abraham GM, and Trivedi N designed and undertook the literature review; Geetha HS, Singh G, Sekar A, and Gogtay M collected data; Gogtay M and Singh Y performed the statistical analysis, figures, and appendix and analyzed and interpreted the data; Geetha HS, Singh G, Sekar A, Singh Y and Gogtay M wrote the first draft of the manuscript; Geetha HS, Singh G, Sekar A, Gogtay M, Singh Y, Abraham GM, Trivedi N revised the subsequent drafts of the manuscript; All authors reviewed and agreed on the final draft of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by our local Medical Center Institutional Review Board (Approval No. 2020-035).
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data is available.
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: Yuvaraj Singh, MD, Chief Medical Resident, Researcher, Department of Internal Medicine, Saint Vincent Hospital, No. 123 Summer Street, Worcester, MA 01608, United States. yuvarajmle@gmail.com
Received: October 30, 2022
Peer-review started: October 30, 2022
First decision: November 27, 2022
Revised: December 17, 2022
Accepted: February 3, 2023
Article in press: February 3, 2023
Published online: February 26, 2023
Core Tip

Core Tip: Our study suggests that there is no correlation between the inflammatory marker levels and the presence of hyperglycemia in non-diabetic patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. With an increased need to understand the mechanism underlying severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection-induced hyperglycemia, we assessed the validity of the most accepted COVID-19 infection-induced cytokine storm-related stress hyperglycemia theory. However, our study did not show any correlation between inflammatory marker levels that correlate with the cytokine storm and the level of hyperglycemia. This suggests the possibility of other mechanisms playing a role in the SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced hyperglycemia. Our study also demonstrated that new-onset hyperglycemia was an independent risk factor for higher mortality and length of stay, thereby emphasizing the need to understand the mechanisms leading to hyperglycemia.