Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Mar;36(3):311-318.
doi: 10.1007/s10654-020-00709-1. Epub 2021 Jan 9.

Pre-diagnostic circulating concentrations of insulin-like growth factor-1 and risk of COVID-19 mortality: results from UK Biobank

Xikang Fan #  1 , Cheng Yin #  2 , Jiayu Wang  1 , Mingjia Yang  1 , Hongxia Ma  1   3   4 , Guangfu Jin  1   3   4 , Mingyang Song  5   6   7 , Zhibin Hu  1   3   4 , Hongbing Shen  1   4 , Dong Hang  8   9
Affiliations

Pre-diagnostic circulating concentrations of insulin-like growth factor-1 and risk of COVID-19 mortality: results from UK Biobank

Xikang Fan et al. Eur J Epidemiol. 2021 Mar.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deteriorates suddenly primarily due to excessive inflammatory injury, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is implicated in endocrine control of the immune system. However, the effect of IGF-1 levels on COVID-19 prognosis remains unknown. Using UK Biobank resource, we investigated the association between circulating IGF-1 concentrations and mortality risk (available death data updated on 07 Sep 2020) among COVID-19 patients who had pre-diagnostic serum IGF-1 measurements at baseline (2006-2010). Unconditional logistic regression was performed to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality. Among 1670 COVID-19 patients, 415 deaths occurred due to COVID-19. Compared to the lowest quartile of IGF-1 concentrations, the highest quartile was associated with a 41% lower risk of mortality (OR = 0.59, 95% CI 0.41-0.86, P-trend = 0.01). In the continuous model, per 1-standard deviation increment in log-transformed IGF-1 was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk (intraclass correlation coefficients corrected OR = 0.85, 95% CI 0.73-0.99). The association was largely consistent in the various stratified and sensitivity analyses. In conclusion, our data suggest that higher IGF-1 concentrations are associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 mortality. Further studies are required to determine whether and how targeting IGF-1 pathway might improve COVID-19 prognosis.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus infection; IGF-1; Mortality; SARS-CoV-2; UK biobank.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have nothing to disclose.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The distributions of original and log-transformed IGF-1 concentrations
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The dose–response relationship between log-transformed IGF-1 concentrations and COVID-19 mortality according to restricted cubic spline regression analysis. The solid line represents estimates of odds ratios and the dashed lines represent 95% confidence intervals
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Forest plots of stratified analysis for the association between serum IGF-1 concentrations and the risk of COVID-19 mortality
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Lai CC, Shih TP, Ko WC, Tang HJ, Hsueh PR. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19): The epidemic and the challenges. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020;55(3):105924. doi: 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105924. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Azkur AK, Akdis M, Azkur D, Sokolowska M, van de Veen W, Bruggen MC, et al. Immune response to SARS-CoV-2 and mechanisms of immunopathological changes in COVID-19. Allergy. 2020 doi: 10.1111/all.14364. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ye Q, Wang B, Mao J. The pathogenesis and treatment of the ‘Cytokine Storm’ in COVID-19. J Infect. 2020;80(6):607–613. doi: 10.1016/j.jinf.2020.03.037. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Stewart CE, Rotwein P. Growth, differentiation, and survival: multiple physiological functions for insulin-like growth factors. Physiol Rev. 1996;76(4):1005–1026. doi: 10.1152/physrev.1996.76.4.1005. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Skarlis C, Nezos A, Mavragani CP, Koutsilieris M. The role of insulin growth factors in autoimmune diseases. Ann Res Hosp. 2019;3:10. doi: 10.21037/arh.2019.03.02. - DOI