December 2, 2024

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Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19

Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19 even patients with mild symptoms



 

The Lancet: Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19 even patients with mild symptoms


Recently, The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, a subsidiary of The Lancet, published a research paper titled: Risks and burdens of incident diabetes in long COVID: a cohort study .

 

The large-scale study of nearly 200,000 people showed that people with Covid- 19 had an increased risk of diabetes a year later, even those with mild symptoms, compared with those without Covid-19.

 

Ziyad Al-Aly , the paper’s corresponding author and director of the St. Louis Health Care System at the Missouri Department of Veterans Affairs, said: ” When the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, we will have to face the “legacy” of the pandemic — chronic diseases . And the healthcare system isn’t ready for that right now.

 

The Lancet: Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19 even patients with mild symptoms

 

Increased risks

 

Ziyad Al-Aly and his colleague Xie Yan reviewed the medical records of more than 180,000 people who survived more than a month after contracting the virus.

They compared those records with the medical records of two groups of more than 4 million people who did not have the virus.

They have previously demonstrated through similar studies that infection with the new coronavirus increases the risk of kidney disease , heart failure and stroke .


In the study, they found that a control group without Covid-19 had a diagnosis of diabetes at a rate of 35 per 1,000 a year later , compared with 48 per 1,000 among those who contracted Covid-19.

Almost all cases are type 2 diabetes, which is caused by the body becoming resistant to insulin or not producing enough insulin.

People infected with Covid-19 had a nearly 40 percent higher risk of developing diabetes a year later than those in a control group who didn’t have Covid-19 .

 

The Lancet: Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19 even patients with mild symptoms

 

The risk of developing diabetes increases with the severity of Covid-19, with people hospitalized or severely ill with Covid-19 having about three times the risk of diabetes compared to a control group without Covid-19.

 

The Lancet: Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19 even patients with mild symptoms

 

 

In addition, the study also found that even those with mild post-COVID-19 disease and no risk factors for diabetes had an increased risk of developing diabetes. And those with a high BMI and obesity more than doubled the risk of diabetes after contracting COVID-19 .

 


Global burden

At present, the number of COVID-19s around the world is still increasing rapidly, and the cumulative number of confirmed cases has exceeded 480 million.

Such a huge number of infected people means that the world will usher in a huge burden of diabetes.

But other diabetes experts pointed out that the study was conducted on U.S. military veterans, mostly older white men, who are not inherently at low risk for diabetes.

Young people are not at high risk of developing diabetes.

 

 

Elusive reason

Early in the pandemic, studies in young adults and children suggested that the virus could damage insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, triggering type 1 diabetes.

However, follow-up studies have concluded that there is no evidence that the COVID-19 will increase the risk of type 1 diabetes in young people and children.

There are also studies refuting the idea that the new coronavirus can damage pancreatic cells.

 

In addition, there is a question of whether the metabolic changes observed in the COVID-19 patients will persist after a year.

Therefore, more research is needed to elucidate long-term trends in new-onset diabetes in people with COVID-19 and to find the reasons for this risk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References :
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00912-y#ref-CR1
https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-8587(22)00044-4

The Lancet: Risks of diabetes increased after infected with COVID-19 even patients with mild symptoms

(source:internet, reference only)


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