The Coronavirusdiabetes Connection

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors recognized that while people with diabetes were no more likely to get the disease than the general population, they were more likely to become sicker. It turns out that the relationship between COVID-19 and diabetes goes two ways. “Some people who had no history of diabetes were showing with full-blown diabetes at the time they were experiencing severe COVID-19,” says Francesco Rubino, MD, chair of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King’s College London, who coauthored a letter about the issue in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Among people who were hospitalized with severe COVID-19, newly diagnosed diabetes appeared in 14.4 percent of cases, according to a study published in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. The mechanism for the link is not clear yet, but it may have something to do with the virus’s triggering an autoimmune response, as well as its effect on specific proteins that are involved in sugar metabolism.

Dr. Rubino urges people who have had COVID-19 to be vigilant about symptoms associated with diabetes: frequent urination, increased hunger and thirst, and fatigue. If these symptoms persist after the virus has abated, patients might want to have their blood sugar level checked.