A US study of seniors has now revealed a 40% increased risk of developing diabetes after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. The study was published a few days ago in the “Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology” and largely confirms the first results of similar studies.
“There is growing evidence that people with Covid-19 can experience a range of consequential harms, including diabetes, in addition to the acute phase of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. , but have not yet been fully presented,” wrote Yan Xie and Ziyad Al-Aly of the Saint Louis University Center for Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the US Department of Military Veterans Affairs, respectively, in the journal (DOI: 10.1016/S2213 – 8587(22)00044-4).
“Increased risk of diabetes”
Epidemiologists analyzed data from 181,280 U.S. institution policyholders for former military personnel with an average age of about 60 years (88% men) who received a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 between March 1, 2020 and September 30. 2021 and were still alive after 30 days. A so-called cohort of 4.2 million people of the same age with similar characteristics without Covid 19 disease from the same period and a second group of about 4.2 million people from the pre-pandemic period served as comparison groups. The deciding factor should be the recurrence of type 2 diabetes within a year.
“In the period after the acute illness, people with Covid-19 showed an increased risk of developing diabetes (40% more) and more new cases (13.46 more new patients per 1,000 people in a year) compared to the group current comparison) as well as a higher frequency of use of blood sugar lowering medications (up to 85%) and more such cases (12.35 per 1,000 people over a 12-month period),” the experts wrote. The comparison with the control group before the pandemic was very similar.
“Chronic Illness Legacy”
The risks are apparently dependent on the severity of the recovered Covid 19 disease. For people not hospitalized for Covid-19, there were 8.28 additional cases of diabetes per 1,000 people in one year. The following year, inpatients with Covid-19 had 56.93 new cases of diabetes per 1,000 people than in comparison groups, and among 1,000 people after Covid-19 therapy in intensive care units there were even 89.06 more. diabetes cases. Obesity with a body mass index greater than 30 was associated with 15.7 more cases of diabetes among 1,000 patients one year after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Ziyad Al-Aly claimed that Covid-19 would leave behind a whole “legacy” of chronic diseases. In November last year, in a similar study in Covid-19 survivors, scientists showed that the risk of acute kidney damage nearly doubled compared to people who did not have a SARS-CoV-2 infection (Journal of the American Society of Nephrology; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1681/ASN.2021060734). According to Deutsches ärzteblatt, a study from Germany for people after a mild illness from Covid 19 showed a 28% increased risk of a new diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
The increase in diabetes cases expected as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic is already facing increasing numbers of this disease. In 2000, 4.6 percent of adults were diabetic, currently it is around ten percent with 530 million patients. For the year 2045, the predictions are about 780 million diabetics worldwide. The main cause is apparently the increasingly common obesity.