Clinical characteristics and acute complication of COVID-19 patients with diabetes: a multicenter, retrospective study in Southern China.

Aims: This study aims to describe the clinical characteristics, laboratory data and complications of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) since epidemic prevention and control optimization was adjusted in December 2022 in China. Methods: This retrospective multicenter study included 298 patients with confirmed type 2 diabetes mellitus with or without COVID-19. We collected data from the first wave of the pandemic in The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Loudi Central Hospital and The First People's Hospital of Xiangtan from December 1, 2022 to February 1, 2023. We extracted baseline data, clinical symptoms, acute complications, laboratory findings, treatment and outcome data of each patient from electronic medical records. Results: For among 298 hospitalized patients with type 2 diabetes, 136 (45.6%) were COVID-19 uninfected, and 162 (54.4%) were COVID-19 infected. We found that the incidence of cough, fatigue, fever, muscle soreness, sore throat, shortness of breath, hyposmia, hypogeusia and polyphagia (all p<0.01) were significantly higher in the exposure group. They showed higher levels of ketone (p=0.04), creatinine (p<0.01), blood potassium (p=0.01) and more diabetic ketoacidosis (p<0.01). Patients with COVID-19 less use of metformin (p<0.01), thiazolidinediones (p<0.01) and SGLT2 (p<0.01) compared with patients without COVID-19. Conclusion: COVID-19 patients with diabetes showed more severe respiratory and constitutional symptoms and an increased proportion of hyposmia and hypogeusia. Moreover, COVID-19 patients with diabetes have a higher incidence of acute complications, are more prone to worsening renal function, and are more cautious about the use of antidiabetic drugs.

Identification of novel genetic variants for type 2 diabetes, childhood obesity, and their pleiotropic loci.

Obesity has result in increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in children. The genetic mechanisms underlying their relationship, however, are not fully understood. Here, we aim to identify novel SNPs associated with T2D and childhood obesity (CO), especially their pleiotropic loci. We integrated the summary statistics for two independent GWASs of T2D (n = 149,821) and childhood body mass index (CBMI) (n = 35,668) using the pleiotropy-informed conditional false discovery rate (cFDR) method. By leveraging the information of different levels of association for CBMI, we observed a strong enrichment of genetic variants associated with T2D. We identified 139 T2D-associated SNPs with 125 novel ones (cFDR < 0.05). Conditioned on T2D, we identified 37 significant SNPs for CBMI (cFDR < 0.05), including 25 novel ones. The conjunctional cFDR (ccFDR) analysis showed ten novel pleiotropic loci for T2D and CBMI (ccFDR < 0.05). Interestingly, the novel SNP rs1996023 is located at protein coding gene GNPDA2 (ccFDR = 1.28E-02), which has been reported to influence the risk of T2D and CO through central nervous system. Our findings may help to explain a greater proportion of the heritability for human traits and advance the understanding of the common pathophysiology between T2D and CO.