Covid can increase the risk of diabetes, especially among the unvaccinated: it is possible that the infection functions as an accelerator of the disease in subjects in themselves at risk who, in the absence of Covid, would have developed the disease many years later.
This was revealed by a research conducted at the Cedars Sinai in the USA and published on Jama Network Open.
To determine rates of diabetes increase, the researchers evaluated the medical records of 23,709 adult patients with COVID-19 who were treated at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles during 2020-2022.
The combined risk of type 2 diabetes after Covid - taking into account both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients - was 2.1%.
The risk of type 2 diabetes after Covid for unvaccinated patients was 2.7%.
The risk of type 2 diabetes after Covid for vaccinated patients was 1%.
"These results suggest that vaccination before infection may have a protective effect against diabetes, although further studies are needed to validate this hypothesis," the authors say.
"While we don't know for sure yet, the trends and patterns we see in the data suggest that COVID-19 may be acting as a disease accelerator in certain contexts, amplifying the risk of a diagnosis individuals might otherwise have received later in the life." life,” says work coordinator Susan Cheng.
"So instead of being diagnosed with diabetes at age 65, a person with a pre-existing risk of diabetes might, after a Covid-19 infection, be more likely to develop diabetes at age 45 or 55." years,” she concludes.
