This review finds that diabetic patients with COVID-19 are at higher risk of ICU admission and show a higher mortality risk that COVID-19 patients without diabetes.

The prognostic significance of diabetes mellitus (DM) in patients with coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) remains unknown.

This review assesses the risk of ICU admission and morality risk in diabetic COVID-19 patients.

The authors performed a database search to identify studies comparing diabetic COVID-19 patients hospitalized in intensive care unit (ICU) and those reporting the overall mortality of these patients that were published up to March 25, 2020 within MEDLINE, Scopus and Web of Science.

They found data for 1382 patients (mean age 51.5 years, 798 males). Among these patients, DM was the second most frequent comorbidity. Diabetic patients had a significant increased risk of ICU admission (OR: 2.79, 95 % CI 1.85–4.22, p < 0.0001, I2 = 46 %).

471 patients had mortality data (mean age 56.6 years, 294 males). In these patients, DM was associated with higher mortality risk (OR 3.21, 95 % CI 1.82–5.64, p < 0.0001, I2 = 16 %).