Doctors investigate whether COVID-19 causes diabetes after ‘concerning’ trend
'There is no reason to panic about diabetes, but there is reason to be alert and pay attention to the connection between COVID and diabetes'
A new coronavirus report has some concerned.
It looks like there could be a link between coronavirus and diabetes. 40% of people who have died from coronavirus had diabetes. And people who were already suffering from the condition are likely to have serious complications if they contract the virus.
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“There is no reason to panic about diabetes, but there is reason to be alert and pay attention to the connection between COVID and diabetes,” said Dr. Francesco Rubino, per Today.
Experts suggest new or recent COVID-19 patients should be mindful of diabetes symptoms, which could be excessive thirst, blurry vision, fatigue, and excessive urination.
“Any inflammatory state can cause insulin resistance,” Dr. Domenico Accili wrote in a commentary in Nature Metabolism by the director of the Columbia University Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center in New York.
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The coronavirus has the ability to enter cells in the pancreas, the liver, and intestines so it is very important to maintain normal sugar metabolism. Blood sugar levels that are too high or too low can cause Type 1 or 2 diabetes.
More than 370 doctors around the world have patient stories for a global COVID-19 patient registry.
“Clearly, the vast majority of people who have COVID-19 will not have diabetes,” said Rubino. “(But) I think there is a problem… even a relatively infrequent event might become significant when COVID is so prevalent.”
Doctors and experts are still researching the discovery but many COVID-19 patients are ultimately connected to the illness.
“The data is saying absolutely that seems to be the case, and it’s at a higher rate than we first realized,” Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association, said.
“It’s very, very concerning. We’re living in the midst of an epidemic of diabetes and literally the last thing we need is something that’s increasing the rates even further.”
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