A new study from the US CDC says that COVID-19 could be linked to a long-term health issue for some children who get the disease.
The study, which was published on January 7, discovered that children and teenagers who have had COVID are more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes a month or more after infection than those who have not had COVID.
Using two different health datasets, IQVIA and HealthVerity, the study examined data from thousands of patients under the age of 18 between March 1, 2020 and February 26, 2021, comparing those who had COVID-19 to those who had a pre-pandemic, non-COVID respiratory infection, as well as those who had neither.
They discovered that children diagnosed with COVID-19 at the time in the IQVIA database were 166 percent more likely than those who did not have COVID to be diagnosed with diabetes afterwards.
In the HealthVerity database, kids with COVID were 31 percent more likely to get a new diabetes diagnosis than kids without COVID.
Children who had COVID were also 116% more likely to acquire diabetes than children who had non-COVID respiratory infections prior to the pandemic, according to researchers. Researchers found no link between non-COVID respiratory illness and diabetes.
According to Dr. Mary Pat Gallagher, head of NYU Langone’s Pediatric Diabetes Center, some illnesses might produce a “perfect storm” that contributes to diabetes development.
“If you are in the process of developing diabetes, will an infection really push you into a diagnosis more quickly than you might otherwise have experienced?” she said. “It seems like maybe we are now finding out that COVID is one of the viruses that maybe can do that a little more than other viruses.”
“I think this is likely, we don’t have the data, but that these kids were on their way to developing diabetes. Maybe it would have been in two years, maybe would have been in five years, but it was coming,” she added. “And maybe having this infection pushed them towards an earlier diagnosis.”
Dr. Sheela Natesh Magge, director of Johns Hopkins’ pediatric endocrinology division, has also observed an increase in diabetes diagnoses throughout the outbreak.
“We’re seeing so many more kids come in with diabetes,” she told CBS News. “And they’re more sick.”
According to Magge, the CDC analysis confirms that information. However, it is unclear whether COVID or other factors are to blame for the diabetes. The study is based on data from insurance claims and does not include information regarding demographic risk factors such as prior health condition, weight, or environment that could have contributed to a diabetes diagnosis.
Over the last two years, the pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity, as well as stress and obesity, all of which can have a substantial impact on overall health, according to Magge.
“There’s some evidence that COVID-19 infection could affect insulin secretion,” she said. “So, you know, we just don’t know what of the different effects of the pandemic are the cause. Is it actually infection, or is it just the pandemic itself and all of the societal factors related to it?”
“You could be seeing it because of all the issues with kids that are at-risk [of diabetes], like due to food insecurity, parents out of work, inactivity,” she said, “all these other factors are there too.”
The development of diabetes could be due to how COVID impacts the body’s organs, such as the “direct attack of the pancreatic cells,” according to researchers. It’s also possible that some of the individuals in the study had prediabetes before contracting COVID, according to the researchers. Prediabetes affects 20% of teenagers in the United States, according to the researchers.
“If you already were at risk, the pandemic probably made it worse,” Magge explained. “The stress of any infection can increase blood sugars and can make you have a higher risk of any of the complications of diabetes because your blood sugars could get higher.”
Researchers also believe that pandemic weight gain and steroid medication given to patients while in the hospital may have led to high blood sugar and diabetes. However, just 1.5 percent to 2.2 percent of the people they evaluated are thought to have drug- or chemical-induced diabetes, according to the researchers.
More research into the factors that influence diabetes diagnosis and the severity of the condition is needed, according to the CDC.
Magge said the study is “definitely alarming,” especially when contemplating the long-term consequences, regardless of whether childhood diabetes cases arise directly from the virus or from these larger ramifications.
“I think it emphasizes that there are a lot of things we don’t know about this virus,” she added. “It does underscore the importance of prevention, the importance of everybody getting vaccinated and all those things, because there is a lot that we don’t know, and it’s definitely concerning.”
COVID or any other viral illness combined with diabetes can make diabetes management more challenging, according to Dr. Gallagher.
“COVID, in particular, really seems to be putting kids at risk for diabetic ketoacidosis much more frequently when they have type 2 diabetes than we saw with other viral infections in the past,” she said.
When there isn’t enough insulin, diabetic ketoacidosis develops, and the liver begins to break down fat for energy. According to the CDC, this process produces acids called ketones, which can pile up to harmful levels.
“That’s a little bit frightening,” Gallagher said, “because that’s life-threatening.”
COVID-19 symptoms appear to be milder in children in many accounts, and the Omicron variant also appears to be milder than early strains. However, regardless of symptoms, Magge believes there is no way of knowing what the long-term implications of COVID will be.
Dr. Gallagher advised people not to be alarmed by the study’s findings, but rather to use them as a reminder to work to prevent COVID infections and for parents to be vigilant of diabetes signs. Increased thirst and urination, as well as weight loss, are examples. Nausea, vomiting, and tiredness are among the more severe symptoms.
COVID vaccines, which are recommended for ages 5 and up, “don’t necessarily absolutely prevent you from getting an infection … and we don’t have data about whether vaccination will decrease the risk of developing diabetes after COVID infection yet because it’s very new. But there’s good reason to believe it might,” she said.
Image Credit: Getty
You were reading: COVID-19 increases the risk of developing diabetes in children – CDC alarms