COVID-19 Increases Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Young People 

COVID-19 Increases Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Young People. Credit | Shutterstock
COVID-19 Increases Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Young People. Credit | Shutterstock

United States: As the country ultimately looks for ways to help reduce the number of young people who are getting type 2 diabetes, a new finding suggests that avoiding COVID-19 might help. A recent study shows that teens who had COVID-19 were much more likely to be basically treated with type 2 diabetes within 6 months than those who had other respiratory infections. 

Researchers who are from the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio conducted this study after earlier research found a similar connection between COVID-19 and type 2 diabetes in adults. 

As reported by WebMD, the new findings were revealed Monday in the Journal of American Medical Association known as JAMA Network Open. Authors included 613602 participants aged 10 to 19 years with COVID or other respiratory infection identified in 2020, 2021 or 2022 from EHRs. 

COVID-19 Increases Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Young People. Credit | Shutterstock
COVID-19 Increases Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Young People. Credit | Shutterstock

Patients with previous diagnosis of type 2 diabetes were mainly excluded from the analysis The analysis was conducted on public who had not previously have been diagnosed of type 2 diabetes. 47% of participants had COVID, and the other 53% had other forms of respiratory diseases

“This is a huge spike,” said Dr Pauline Terebuh, an epidemiologist and the head of the research study that was published in the Washington Post. “If a child is getting diagnosed with diabetes, they still have a life ahead of them to live with that chronic disease.” 

Risk levels were similar from other investigations conducted on overweight and obese adolescents and teenagers.  

The majority of the participants in the study were not ill enough to require hospitalisation. In cases of COVID, about 14,000 of the patients diagnosed were hospitalized and had a three times like totally increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes than the more than 22,000 patients admitted with other respiratory diseases. 

The researchers were not able to look at whether having COVID-19 vaccination influenced the risk of developing new DM, which the researchers admitted as methods’ limitation. With survey information, 49% of the population below 18 had taken a dose of the preventive vaccine by mid: November of 2022, but top parental concerns included side effects and mistrust. 

Type II diabetes is a chronic disease for which there is no treatment and which results in hyperglycaemia and numerous complications throughout life. 

A recent CDC analysis projects that the number of people under the age of 20 and who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the U.S will increase by at least 70 percent by the year 2060 with the potential increase as great as 700 percent if rates continue to rise as steeply as they did between 2002 and 2017.