Oct. 15, 2024 – As the country looks for methods to scale back the variety of young people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a recent avenue of prevention is emerging: avoiding COVID-19.
Teens and adolescents were rather more more likely to be newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes inside six months of contracting COVID-19 than children of the identical age diagnosed with other respiratory infections, a recent study shows.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio conducted the project after previous studies found an identical link between COVID and sort 2 diabetes in adults.
The recent findings were published Monday within the Journal JAMA network opened. Researchers analyzed data from electronic health records of 613,602 people ages 10 to 19 who had COVID or one other respiratory infection in 2020, 2021 or 2022. Only people with no previous diagnosis of type 2 diabetes were included within the evaluation. Half of the people within the study were diagnosed with COVID, and the remaining half were diagnosed with flu, pneumonia or one other acute respiratory infection.
The risk of developing type 2 diabetes increased from one month after having COVID to the six-month mark. At that time, those diagnosed with COVID were greater than 50% more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for individuals who had other respiratory illnesses.
“This is a huge increase,” said epidemiologist and senior study creator Pauline Terebuh, MD, MPH The Washington Post. “If a child is diagnosed with diabetes, they will have a long life with this chronic disease.”
The level of risk was similar when researchers examined only obese and obese adolescents and teenagers.
Most study participants weren't sick enough to be hospitalized. In total, 14,000 people were hospitalized with a COVID diagnosis, and their risk of type 2 diabetes was increased threefold, in comparison with the greater than 22,000 people hospitalized for other respiratory infections.
The researchers were unable to look at whether vaccination against COVID-19 affects the likelihood of a recent diabetes diagnosis, which the researchers considered a very important limitation to their findings. Um 50% of people under 18 years old By mid-November 2022, they'd received a minimum of one dose of the vaccine. This comes from survey data which also showed that folks' biggest concerns were uncomfortable side effects and a insecurity.
There is not any cure for type 2 diabetes, a metabolic disease that may result in dangerously high blood sugar levels and is linked to many other serious health problems throughout life. A current one CDC analysis projects that the number of individuals under 20 diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the United States will increase by a minimum of 70% by 2060, with a possible increase of as much as 700% if rates increase proceed to rise as sharply as before between 2002 and 2017.