The trauma of COVID-19 is not over yet. There are many long-term implications of this, which will gradually unravel.
Now new research has discovered that people who had COVID-19 have a higher chance of developing diabetes within the next year by about 40%.
Researchers examined health records of over 8 million people. Out of them, 180,000 were those who had COVID-19. Researchers observed that the probability of developing diabetes grew for those who were hospitalized or admitted to intensive care.
The findings align with another study from Germany. The study by German researchers was smaller and shorter in duration, but the results point towards the same result.
Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief researcher for the Veterans Affairs (VA) St Louis Healthcare System in Missouri, said, “The risk is small but not negligible,”
“It’s really, really clear that all these roads are pointing in one direction, that COVID-19 increases the risk of diabetes up to a year later.”
Venkat Narayan, MD, and Lisa R Staimez, Ph.D., from Rollins School of Public Health and Emory Global Diabetes Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, explained the long-term implications of COVID-19 increasing diabetes risk are “profound”.
“Any COVID-19-related increases in diabetes incidence could lead to unprecedented cases of diabetes worldwide—wreaking havoc on already over-stretched and under-resourced clinical and public health systems globally, with devastating tolls in terms of deaths and suffering,” they write.
