Impact of COVID-19 on glycaemic control in a Spanish cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on monitoring and glycaemic control of people with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in a Spanish population. This prospective cohort study focused on patients with T2DM from a Spanish cohort followed since 2017, with at least one HbA1c determination since the start of the pandemic. A total of 246 patients was included; 45.9% (113) had at least one HbA1c measurement during the pandemic and, in this case, we used the most recent one. The HbA1c mean value increased from 7.37% before the pandemic to 7.43% (p=0.63). Those patients with previous HbA1c >= 8.5% were the ones whose glycaemic controlled worsened: uncontrolled patients increased from 10.5% to 28.6% (p<0.05), relative risk 1.65. In conclusion, nine months after the pandemic start, less than a half of the T2DM patients in our Spanish cohort had at least one HbA1c measurement. Glycaemic control was similar when comparing before versus after the pandemic start, although those patients who were previously poorly controlled had a 1.65 higher risk of worsening their glycaemic control compared to the rest. Copyright (C) 2022 John Wiley & Sons.