COVID-19 ups risk of diabetes

Covid-19 patients are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, researchers reported on March 21, 2022 in Diabetologia.

 “Put simply, this means that the relative risk of developing type 2 diabetes was 28% higher in the Covid-19 group than in the AURI [acute upper respiratory tract infections] group,” said first author Wolfgang Rathmann, M.D., head of the Epidemiology Research Group at the DDZ (German Diabetes Center) in Dusseldorf.

As background, the authors noted that their goal was to study the onset of Type 2 diabetes after an infection with coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). To do so more accurately they also included and evaluated data on a comparator group of non-COVID-19 patients with acute upper respiratory tract infections (AURI), infections which are frequently caused by viruses.

The investigators included data on 35,865 subjects with documented Covid-19. They used standard statistical tools to match and compare these subjects to 35,865 AURI control subjects.

They reported that subjects with COVID-19 had an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with AURI subjects (15.8 vs 12.3 per 1000 person-years, respectively). In other words, the COVID subjects were at a 28% higher risk of developing diabetes compared to the AURI subjects.

The authors concluded, “Covid-19 confers an increased risk for type 2 diabetes. If confirmed, these results support the active monitoring of glucose dysregulation after recovery from mild forms of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.”