SARS-CoV-2 Infection and New-Onset Type 2 Diabetes Among Pediatric Patients, 2020 to 2022
Obesity and COVID-19 Vaccination Large Sources of Uncontrolled Confounding--Outlook Not Good
Before the pandemic, the obesity epidemic and it’s secondary wave of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease were the big public health problems most frequently discussed. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the focus to infectious disease threats devised in biolabs. However, recent studies indicate we should not take our eyes of the tsunami of diabetes heading for developing countries.
Miller et al. studied a database of pediatric patients aged 10 to 19 years at the time of the index event of an upper respiratory infection (COVID-19 or other respiratory infection) between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022. The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10), code for COVID-19 (U07.1) as an encounter diagnosis or a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2 as documented by the TriNetX curated code 9088 for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and related RNA between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022, and no record of COVID-19 or positive SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection before the study period. Importantly, none of these cases COVID-19 illness confirmed by adjudication and COVID-19 vaccination was not recorded.
Nevertheless, after matching, there was a consistent increase in the short term risk of type 2 diabetes denoted by ICD-10 codes. No matter what the mechanism, this is not good news. We can add more diabetes among young persons as a consequence of the pandemic. Future studies of the metabolic effect of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein derived from infection and vaccination are warranted given the large population at risk for future type 2 diabetes mellitus.
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