The odds of developing diabetes have increased as the severity of Covid increases up to a year after the infection. Scientists: Consequences on world health systems
Anyone who gets sick with Covid would have a 40% higher risk of developing diabetes, up to a year after contracting Sars-CoV-2 compared to those who were not infected. The danger progressively decreases according to the severity of the disease, but would remain significant up to a year after infection.
the result of a large study published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology that he studied 180 thousand peoplenoting that the diabetes a possible long-term complication of Covid. The new research adds to a growing number of studies showing how Covid-19 can actually increase the risk of diabetes. Already the US CDC had seen an increase in diabetes diagnoses among children and adolescents during the pandemic. And also in Lombardy there was an increase (of type 1 diabetes) in 2020 compared to previous years.
The consequences
One of the authors, Dr. Ziyad Al-Alydirector of the Clinical Epidemiology Center, and lead researcher at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, points out that when the pandemic ends we will be left with a legacy of
chronic diseases
. And the risk that health systems are not prepared. The long-term implications of Sars-CoV-2 infection on increased diabetes risk are profound they wrote in an accompanying editorial. Venkat Narayan e Lisa Staimez of the Rollins School of Public Health and the Emory Global Diabetes Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta. With a large and growing number of people around the world infected with the virus, any increase in the incidence of Covid-19-related diabetes could lead to unprecedented diabetes cases worldwidewreaking havoc in already overburdened and under-resourced public health systems, with devastating tolls in terms of death and suffering.
Gravity
Al-Aly and epidemiologist Yan Xie examined the medical records of over 180,000 infected people. The data were compared with those of people who had not contracted Covid. The analysis found that people who had Covid-19 were about 40% more likely to develop diabetes up to a year later than the veterans in the control groups. Almost all of the cases reported were type 2 diabetes, which occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin.
The likelihood of developing diabetes increases as the severity of Covid-19 increases. People who were hospitalized or in intensive care had about three times the risk compared to participants in the control group who had not contracted Covid-19. However, even those who had become slightly ill had a higher risk of getting diabetes: in the study it was observed that every thousand people studied developed diabetes 8 more people among the infected than those not infected, even one year after Covid disease. . People with a high body mass index had a more than doubled risk of developing diabetes after a SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to those who did not contract the virus in the same condition.
The limits
Researchers interviewed by Nature pointed out that the volunteers were mostly white, elderly men, many of whom had high blood pressure and were overweight, data that already exposes them to a high risk of developing diabetes. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist studying diabetes at the University of Wollongong in Australia commented: The risk is much lower in young people – he added – and higher in some ethnic groups. It is possible that some people in the control group had mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 undetected, but were never tested, potentially skewing the data. Finally, cases of diabetes may never have been detected until people have sought assistance for Covid-19.
The cause
The mechanisms underlying the association are unknown and almost certainly heterogeneous. In people who already had risk factors for type 2 diabetes, such as obesity or metabolic syndrome, the infection may have only accelerated the process. In addition, for those who do not have risk factors for diabetes, Covid-19, given the inflammatory state it causes in the body, could lead to a de novo disease, Al-Aly pointed out. However, the link between Covid and diabetes still remains unknown
April 3, 2022 (change April 3, 2022 | 12:40 pm)
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