“Canadian study finds Covid-19 triples risk of type 2 diabetes in women after serious illness, increases risk in men even after mild cases; intensive care patients over 3 times more likely to develop the disease, according to JAMA study of 630,000 people over 257 days in British Columbia, raising concerns of rise in diabetes rates by 3-5%”

2023-04-20 09:33:41

According to a Canadian study, Covid-19 can more than triple the risk of developing type 2 diabetes within a year of infection. While this only applies to women after a serious illness, the probability for men was significantly increased even after mild courses.

Those who had to be hospitalized due to their infection with SARS-CoV2 had the highest risk. Their risk of type 2 diabetes more than doubled. Those who had to be treated in an intensive care unit were more than three times as likely to develop the metabolic disease.

Rise in diabetes diagnoses

For the study in the journal JAMA Network Open was published, the researchers analyzed health data from the years 2020 and 2021 for around 630,000 people. One in five people was diagnosed with Covid during this time. Most individuals were not vaccinated because vaccines were not widely available at the time the data were collected. The follow-up period was 257 days. The data comes from a registry maintained by public health officials in British Columbia, Canada.

The study authors point out that the results do not indicate that Covid-19 causes type 2 diabetes. However, Covid can affect the pancreas. This in turn is responsible for the production of insulin, which does not work properly in people with diabetes. Such stress can move a patient from a prediabetic state to diabetes, the authors said.

The researchers assume that increased diabetes diagnoses after a Covid infection could increase the overall rate of diabetes in the general population by three to five percent.