impact of covid-19-related stress on glycaemic control in hospitalized patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background: evaluation of the impact of stress on glycaemiccontrol in hospitalized type-2 diabetes (t2dm) patients withcoronavirus disease (covid-19).methods: in this retrospective study conducted at a single centrein maharashtra from may to july 2020 on hospitalized covid-19 patients with t2dm who reported having stress of pandemic;they were selected using purposive sampling. dass-12 stresssub-scale was used to estimate the severity of their stress. fastingblood glucose (fbg) and post-prandial blood glucose (ppbg)before admission and at the time of discharge were compared.results: one hundred and ninety-nine patients (mean age 54years; 61.30% females) were included. mean±sd fbg beforeadmission was 168.4±30.6 mg/dl which increased to 195.9±28.8mg/dl at the time of discharge (p<0.001). also, mean±sdppbg before admission was 312±62.3 mg/dl which increased to351.6±61.9 mg/dl (p<0.001). a total of 73 (36.7%) participantshad perceived stress. moderate and severe/extremely severe stresswas found in 44 (27.1%) and 19 (9.6%) patients, respectively. asignificant difference was observed in the mean fbg before andduring discharge in patients who had no stress and those withmoderate stress (p<0.001). there was no difference in fbg inpatients with severe/extremely severe stress (p=0.43). similarobservations were seen for ppbg (no stress p<0.001; moderatestress p<0.001; severe/extremely severe stress p=0.06).conclusion: there was a rise in the glucose level in t2dmpatients discharged after covid-19 treatment. the increase wassignificant in t2dm without stress and those with moderate stress.in addition to traditional treatment, measures for psychologicalstress control should also be taken for such patients.