Key points:
- A study has found COVID-19 survivors are at a 66% higher risk of developing diabetes compared with those not diagnosed.
- Researchers found that the virus induces the death of pancreatic beta cells and affects insulin levels.
- To date, more than 660 million people have tested positive for COVID-19.
According to a study by Penn State College of Medicine researchers, COVID-19 survivors have a 66% higher risk of developing type 1 or type 2 diabetes compared with those not diagnosed with COVID-19.
Researchers found that SARS-CoV-2 binds to an enzyme receptor found on the surface of many organs and tissues, including the pancreas, small intestine and kidneys. Other research teams found that the virus induces the death of pancreatic beta cells and affects insulin levels.
“We can’t definitively conclude that COVID-19 causes diabetes, and more research on whether there is a biological cause to explain this association is needed,” said Paddy Ssentongo, an internal medicine resident at Penn State Health. “But we know that other viruses like mumps virus, rotavirus and cytomegalovirus are associated with the development of diabetes, so it’s not implausible that SARS-CoV-2, which has been shown to affect multiple systems in the human body, can also do the same.”
In the study published in Nature, Ssentongo and his team pulled data from eight studies that took place from December 2019 to October 2022. The final analysis data came from more than 4 million COVID-19 patients and 43 million control patients who were not diagnosed with the illness.
The team used statistical modeling to find an average risk ratio—the measure of how much higher risk a COVID-19 survivor has of developing diabetes than someone who was not diagnosed with the virus. They found a pooled risk ratio of 1.66, implying that COVID-19 survivors have a 66% higher risk of developing new onset diabetes. The risk did not vary by age, sex or the quality of the study used.
The researchers said their future research will focus on the social determinants of health associated with COVID-related diabetes, and if there are biological causes associated with the increased risk.