Preliminary studies show a possible link between the serious ones COVID-19 infections and new cases of diabetes in some patients.
Doctors have known for some time that people with diabetes are more at risk of serious illness of coronavirus, but now scientists are working to determine if the virus may also lead some patients to develop new cases of diabetes. Research in the medical journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism and other studies raises concerns about the possibility that the relationship will go in both directions.
“Researchers are working like crazy to see if COVID attacks pancreatic beta cells, which produce insulin,” pediatrician Dr. Tuesday said. Dyan Hes. “Some studies think so, but other studies have been repeated saying it’s not attracted to the beta cell. We still don’t know why.”
Almost a year after the pandemic, effects of “Long COVID” such as long-term respiratory complications and mild cognitive impairment have been documented in many patients, as have other neurological symptoms, blood clots, cops, i damage to the heart and kidneys. The analysis published in November 2020 found that of 3,700 patients hospitalized in eight studies, up to 14.4% were recently diagnosed with diabetes.
“As a pediatrician we have definitely been following cases of children who have had COVID or who didn’t even know they had COVID, but who had type 1 diabetes,” Hes said.
Type 1 diabetes, he explained, is an autoimmune disease “where the body stops producing insulin.” Type 2 is “when your body does not respond to the insulin you have.”
Doctors in Wuhan, China, reported a link between COVID-19 and high blood sugar levels in April 2020.
He noted that there could be a connection to the treatments some patients receive. “When they get hospital treatment for super-sick patients, they get prednisone, which also raises blood sugar. So does that also contribute?”
Italian scientists also examined whether these high blood sugar levels could lead to diabetes, recognizing a previously understood link between long-term viral infections and the disorder. This study, published last May, acknowledged that more research was needed before a conclusion could be reached.
Hes said it was “not surprising” that a viral infection like COVID-19 could trigger type I diabetes, but the medical history of these patients needs to be studied. “Should we follow patients and see if they really had a family history of autoimmune or type I diabetes, or was it just COVID? Was that the only risk factor?”
Leading diabetes scientists in the UK and Australia are setting up a global registry of coronavirus-related diabetes cases. In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers said it was “plausible” that the effects of COVID-19 on the body’s ability to metabolize glucose could complicate existing insulin levels or create new problems. which would cause the onset of diabetes.
Francesco Rubino, a professor of diabetes surgery at King’s College London, told the Washington Post that the register already had more than 150 names and that it received responses from more than 350 institutions around the world. Rubino and other researchers suggested that the global study could “discover new mechanisms of disease.”
Dr. Hes, who noted that the studies were preliminary, acknowledged the apparent link, but said more research was needed to understand it.
“It’s too early to tell,” he said. “We need large amounts to predict that.”