Covid-19 might also trigger a wave of chronic diseases. A US study of older people showed a 40 percent increased risk of developing diabetes following a corona infection.
The study was published in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Accordingly, there is “growing evidence that people with Covid-19 can suffer a number of consequential damages, including diabetes, beyond the acute phase of a SARS-CoV-2 infection”.
The epidemiologists analyzed data from 181,280 policyholders at the US veteran facility, with an average age of 60 (88 percent male), who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between March 1, 2020 and September 30, 2021 and following were alive for 30 days.
A so-called cohort of 4.2 million people of the same age with similar characteristics without Covid-19 disease from the same period and a second group with around 4.2 million people from the time before the pandemic served as comparison groups. The decisive factor should be the new occurrence of type 2 diabetes within a year. People with Covid-19 had a 40 percent increased risk of diabetes, and there were more new cases (+ 13.46 per 1000 people within one year).
Blood sugar-lowering drugs had to be taken 85 percent more frequently, and they were also affected (12.35 more per 1,000 people). The comparison with the control group before the pandemic was very similar.
The risk increases with the severity of the Covid 19 disease
The risks are apparently dependent on the severity of the recovered Covid 19 disease. In corona patients who were not hospitalized, there were 8.28 diabetes diseases per 1000 people, 56.93 in hospitalized patients and even 89.06 in intensive care patients.
