COVID-19 Associated Diabetes Could Be Transitory, Study Suggests

Apr, 2022 - By SMI

The research found that the COVID-19 patient newly diagnosed with diabetes could be temporarily affected due to the acute stress of the viral infection

Researchers found a link between diabetes and COVID-19 in the beginning of the pandemic. The patients with pre-existing diabetes suffered severe COVID-19 infection, also many subjects were found to developed symptoms of diabetes during the acute infection of the virus. A research conducted by a group of scientists from Harvard Medical School found that the COVID-19 patients newly diagnosed with diabetes could be temporarily affected due to the acute stress and could possibly go back to normal levels of blood sugar.

In this research, the scientists studied medical records from hundreds of subjects visiting the hospital with COVID-19 in 2020. These patients were estimated to be non-white, younger, and on medical or unisured as compared to people with earlier diagnosed diabetes. This indicated that many of these subjects with newly diagnosed could just be pre-existing, yet with undiagnosed diabetes and people having limited healthcare services. Out of all these case studies, researchers studied 78 subjects with no pre-existing diabetes history, yet exhibited diabetic symptoms during admission. The researchers found that the demographic data showed these newly diagnosed diabetes cases related to COVID were found in young individuals with low levels of health insurance and restricted English proficiency.

Furthermore, from these findings, the researchers hypothesized that COVID-19 was not directly linked to diabetes. Instead, the doctors were identifying undiagnosed or pre-diabetic patients at higher rate during the hospitalization of patients with COVID-19 infection. Moreover, almost all the newly diagnosed diabetic cases linked to COVID were observed to return to normal within a year of discharge. The new research is not a definitive answer to the mystery of COVID-19 and diabetes, however, it provides a longitudinal investigations into those new cases of diabetes appearing alongside COVID-19. The research needs more work to get better understanding of the link between COVID-19 and acute hyperglycemia.