An analysis published in the medical journal, The Lancet, states that COVID-19 can cause diabetes in people who would not otherwise have developed the disease.
The authors of the analysis also found that COVID-19 may act as an amplifier of baseline exposures and accelerate disease progression. In an analysis by Washington-based scientist Ziyad Al Ali, published in the commentary section of The Lancet, previously, several lines of evidence suggested that the myriad clinical abnormalities of prolonged Covid may extend to new-onset diabetes.
The article stresses that many research questions will need to be answered in the near future as the world is still trying to understand the long-term side effects of COVID-19.
Epidemiologist Alley, who works at the Institute for Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis, investigated whether there was an association between new-onset diabetes and COVID-19.
joining the dots…
“Together with my colleague Yan Shi, we used data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which looked at diabetes risk and survival at 12 months in 1,81,280 people with SARS-CoV-2 infection versus two control groups,” the analysis said. The burden was marked.” Title ‘Diabetes after SARS CoV2 infection’.
These two control groups were divided into 41,18,441 contemporary controls enrolled during the same time period but not infected with SARS-CoV-2 and 42,86,911 historical controls from before the pandemic.
Their findings suggested that compared to both contemporary and historical controls, people with SARS-CoV-2 were at increased risk of occurrence of diabetes after acute diabetes or on long-term antihyperglycemic therapy (anti-diabetic drugs). ,
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“Interestingly, compared to non-infected controls, an increased risk of diabetes (over 99% had type 2 diabetes) was also evident in those who had a very low baseline (pre- COVID-19) risk, including age, race, gender, body-mass index, hypertension and hyperlipidemia,” the analysis found.
In people with COVID-19, there was a gradual increase in the risk of diabetes according to baseline risk of diabetes, which are traditional baseline characteristics that predict a person’s risk of developing diabetes.
limits and the way forward
The main limitation of the study was that the participants were predominantly white males.
Due to a paucity of studies, the evidence base for new-onset diabetes following COVID-19 in children is poorly developed and, in fact, the evidence for an increased risk of diabetes following SARS-CoV-2 infection is not universally consistent. ,
For example, the authors wrote, “A Scottish study in people under 35 years of age reported a 20% increase in the incidence of type 1 diabetes in general during the pandemic, and an increase in the risk of type 1 diabetes, but not beyond, the first 30 days of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
The analysis suggested that “there may be a possible coexistence of the two pathways that should be investigated in mechanistic studies”.
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First, the potential for COVID-19 to lead to renewed disease in people who might not otherwise develop diabetes, and second, “COVID-19 as an amplifier of baseline exposures and an accelerator of disease development.”
The authors concluded that a “robust research agenda is urgently needed to better understand COVID (and all of its components, including the increased risk of diabetes), how to prevent, and treat it over the long term.”
increased risk of pre-existing diabetes
Several previous studies have previously highlighted the trend.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) analysis of a comprehensive electronic healthcare database of more than 3.50 lakh adults with COVID-19 and 16.40 lakh controls without any evidence of infection suggested that people with COVID-19 have new-onset Type 1 Diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes.
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In addition, a German cohort study of 35,865 people with Covid-19 showed a higher risk of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes than matched controls with acute upper respiratory tract infections.
In addition, the latest study by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, involving more than 13 million individuals, shows that compared to non-infected controls, both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection have a higher risk of diabetes. The danger increases. It was also found that the long-term risk of diabetes in people who had a post-vaccination Covid infection was not significantly different from that of non-vaccinated individuals.
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