COVID significantly increases diabetes risk in children and adolescents

October 15, 2024 – As the country looks for ways to reduce the number of young people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a new prevention path is emerging: avoiding COVID-19.

Teenage boys and girls were significantly more likely to be newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within 6 months of COVID-19, compared to children of the same age who had been diagnosed with other respiratory infections, according to a new study. study.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio carried out the project after previous studies found a similar link between COVID and Type 2 diabetes in adults.

The new discoveries were published Monday in the newspaper Open JAMA Network. Researchers analyzed electronic health record data from 613,602 people ages 10 to 19 who had COVID or other documented respiratory infection during 2020, 2021, or 2022. Only people without a prior diagnosis of diabetes type 2 were included in the analysis. Half of the people in the study were diagnosed with COVID and the other half were diagnosed with the flu, pneumonia or other acute respiratory infection.

The risk of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes increased between one month post-COVID and six months, at which point people diagnosed with COVID were more than 50% more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, compared to to those who had other respiratory illnesses.

“This is a huge spike,” said epidemiologist and lead author of the study, Pauline Terebuh, MD, MPH. The Washington Post. “If a child is diagnosed with diabetes, they will have a lifetime of carrying this chronic disease. »

Risk levels were similar when researchers looked only at overweight and obese adolescents and adolescents.

Most people in the study were not sick enough to be hospitalized. Overall, 14,000 people diagnosed with COVID were hospitalized and their risk of type 2 diabetes increased threefold, compared to the more than 22,000 people hospitalized for other respiratory infections.

The researchers were unable to examine whether being vaccinated against COVID-19 impacted the likelihood of a new diabetes diagnosis, which they acknowledged was an important limitation to their results. About 50% of people under 18 had received at least one dose of the vaccine as of mid-November 2022, according to survey data that also showed parents’ top concerns were side effects and lack of confidence.

There is no cure for type 2 diabetes, which is a metabolic disease that can lead to dangerously high blood sugar levels and is linked to many other serious health problems throughout life. A recent CDC Analysis predicts that the number of people under the age of 20 who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the United States will increase by at least 70% by 2060, with a potential increase of up to 700% if rates continue to rise. increase as quickly as they did. between 2002 and 2017.