Blood sugar control is key for people with diabetes and COVID-19.

ISLAMABAD -- People with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at greater risk of a poor outcome if they become infected with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) -- and in such situations, controlling blood sugar levels can lead to favourable outcomes, said researchers.

More than 500 million people around the world have T2D. While it was clear that people with this condition fare worse with COVID-19, the researchers wondered what role a person's blood glucose control might have on those outcomes.

"We were surprised to see such favourable outcomes in well-controlled blood glucose group among patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing type 2 diabetes," said study senior author Hongliang Li of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University in China.

"Considering that people with diabetes had a much higher risk for death and various complications, and there are no specific drugs for COVID-19, our findings indicate that controlling blood glucose well may act as an effective auxiliary approach to improve the prognosis of patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing diabetes," Li added.

For the results, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the research team conducted a retrospective longitudinal multi-centre study including 7,337 confirmed COVID-19 cases enrolled among 19 hospitals in Hubei Province, China, Science Daily reported .

Of those, 952 people had T2D...