Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes of Hypertensive Patients Infected with COVID-19: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

Background

Hypertension has been reported as the most prevalent comorbidity in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This retrospective study aims to compare the clinical characteristics and outcomes in COVID-19 patients with or without hypertension.

Methods

A total of 944 hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were included from January to March 2020. Information from the medical record, including clinical features, radiographic and laboratory results, complications, treatments, and clinical outcomes, were extracted for the analysis.

Results

A total of 311 (32.94%) patients had comorbidity with hypertension. In COVID-19 patients with hypertension, the coexistence of type 2 diabetes (56.06% vs 43.94%), coronary heart disease (65.71% vs 34.29%), poststroke syndrome (68.75% vs 31.25%) and chronic kidney diseases (77.78% vs 22.22%) was significantly higher, while the coexistence of hepatitis B infection (13.04% vs 86.96%) was significantly lower than in COVID-19 patients without hypertension. Computed tomography (CT) chest scans show that COVID-19 patients with hypertension have higher rates of pleural effusion than those without hypertension (56.60% vs 43.40%). In addition, the levels of blood glucose [5.80 (IQR, 5.05–7.50) vs 5.39 (IQR, 4.81–6.60)], erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) [28 (IQR, 17.1–55.6) vs 21.8 (IQR, 11.5–44.1), P=0.008], C-reactive protein (CRP) [17.92 (IQR, 3.11–46.6) vs 3.15 (IQR, 3.11–23.4), P=0.013] and serum amyloid A (SAA) [99.28 (IQR, 8.85–300) vs 15.97 (IQR, 5.97–236.1), P=0.005] in COVID-19 patients with hypertension were significantly higher than in patients without hypertension.

Conclusion

It is common for patients with COVID-19 to have the coexistence of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and so on, which may exacerbate the severity of COVID-19. Therefore, optimal management of hypertension and other comorbidities is essential for better clinical outcomes.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• coronavirus disease
• hypertension
• clinical characteristics
• comorbidities

Ethics Statement

The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and carried out in accordance with the recommendations of Chinese National Guidelines and Ethics Branch of the Biomedical Ethics Committee of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine (ZE2020-049-01).

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the doctors and nurses of Hubei Provincial Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital for their assistance.

Author Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; took part in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; agreed to submit to the current journal; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in relation to this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (2020YFA0708001, 2020YFC0845300, 2020YFC0841600), the Guangdong Province Science and Technology Planning Project (2019A070717007), the Guangdong Provincial Department of Education Project (2020KZDZX1054), the Fund of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine (2021XK06, 2021XK49, 2021YJZX012), the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Chinese Medicine (20212094 and 20191377), and the Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine Fund (YN2019ML11 and YN2019QJ13).