A recent American study showed that some Corona patients may develop diabetes “temporarily” due to the acute stress of viral infection, and they may return to normal blood sugar levels shortly following discharge from the hospital.
And it may be a “temporary form” of diabetes that many patients diagnosed with COVID-19 during hospitalization, given the association of diabetes with acute stress of viral infection, according to the study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital in America, and published in the latest issue of the Journal of “Diabetes and its complications”.
High rates of newly diagnosed diabetes in hospital admissions due to COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, however, it was not clear whether this phenomenon represented truly new or previously undiagnosed diabetes. Which raises questions regarding the cause of high blood sugar, and whether patients’ blood sugar improves following recovery from corona infection.
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Rather than directly causing diabetes, COVID-19 may prompt patients with pre-existing but undiagnosed diabetes to go to the doctor for the first time, where the glycemic disorder can be clinically diagnosed.
The study showed that these individuals had higher and more inflammatory markers – which required admission to hospital intensive care units – compared to corona patients with pre-existing diabetes, and unlike undiagnosed diabetes patients, the researchers found a group whose diabetes is temporary.
For the study, the Massachusetts General Hospital team looked at 594 individuals who showed signs of diabetes when they were admitted to hospital at the height of the epidemic in the spring of 2020.
Of that group, 78 people had no known diagnosis of diabetes before hospitalization, and researchers learned that many of these newly diagnosed patients, as opposed to those with pre-existing diabetes, had lower blood sugar levels, but more The severity of COVID-19.
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Follow-up with this group following hospital discharge revealed that nearly half of its members had returned to normal blood sugar levels, and only 8% required insulin following one year.
“This suggests that newly diagnosed diabetes may be a temporary condition related to the acute stress of COVID-19 infection,” says Sarah Cromer, a researcher in the Division of Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the study’s lead author. The main clinical argument that newly diagnosed diabetes is likely to be due to insulin resistance (which means cells are unable to absorb blood sugar properly in response to insulin), leading to a buildup of glucose in the blood more than usual, rather than a deficiency Insulin induced direct and permanent injury to the beta cells that make insulin.”
“Our results suggest that acute insulin resistance is the main mechanism underlying newly diagnosed diabetes in most COVID-19 patients,” Cromer says.
“These patients may only need insulin or other medications for a short time, so it is important that doctors monitor them closely to see if their condition improves,” she says.
