Risk for Newly Diagnosed Diabetes >30 Days After SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Persons Aged <18 years, 2022, Barrett et al

Summary
What is already known about this topic?

SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with worsening of diabetes symptoms, and persons with diabetes are at increased risk for severe COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 infection might also induce newly diagnosed diabetes.

What is added by this report?

Persons aged <18 years with COVID-19 were more likely to receive a new diabetes diagnosis >30 days after infection than were those without COVID-19 and those with prepandemic acute respiratory infections. Non–SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection was not associated with an increased risk for diabetes.

What are the implications for public health practice?

The increased diabetes risk among persons aged <18 years following COVID-19 highlights the importance of COVID-19 prevention strategies in this age group, including vaccination for all eligible persons and chronic disease prevention and treatment.

Open access, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm

 

I thought this may have been just type 2 but it seems to be type 1 too which I had understood as being inherited genetics.

Does this mean that type 1 is simply being picked up as kids are ill and would have developed to the point where its would have been diagnosed anyway .

Is this a marker for poor general.metabolic health linked perhaps to the rise in childhood obesity?

 

There is no one we know on either side who has diabetes but my grandson developed it when he was 17. Obesity has no connection with type 1 which is not caused by insulin resistance but by the part of the pancreas which secretes insulin being attacked and destroyed by the immune cells.

Covid leading to more cases of type 1 must be because it increases autoimmunity.

We had no idea that he was developing diabetes. He became very thin but then teenagers do, he just wanted to laze about, teenage behaviour, his mother joked about coming in from work and he had drank 2 tins of cider that were in the fridge. Then my husband saw a poster in the hospital and asked me to use my blood sugar meter to test his blood. The measure was off the scale and he was just hours away from ketosis.

I describe this because it is not publicised enough and people need to be more aware especially if covid is leading to an increase. Ketosis is life threatening and difficult to treat but those few hours meant he responded to insulin.

 

Development of Type 1 diabetes is multifactorial, like so many diseases. From the WebMD site that Trish referred to:
"Keep in mind that most people with type 1 diabetes don’t have relatives who do, so it often seems to come out of nowhere."

Our son was diagnosed with Type 1, thre weeks before his 17th birthday. A close friend of his at school had had it since he was 11, so Chris was quite aware of warning signs and was able to rest his blood on his friend's meter.
We saw the GP, who rang thro' to the paediatric ward to and expect him. We went to the hospital via home to get supplies, but by the time we got to the ward, they had decided that it was better if he was seen under the adult service. This meant that we had to go via A and E, because the GP hadn't rung the adult assessment unit, and after the delay in A and E getting to the ward, the adult dietitian who he needed to see had gone home for the w/e! So he was stuck in there till the following Monday...