New diabetes cases linked to covid-19

[Zorro]

Researchers don’t understand exactly how the disease might trigger Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, or whether the cases are temporary or permanent. But 14 percent of those with severe covid-19 developed a form of the disorder, one analysis found.

Mihail Zilbermint is used to treating diabetes — he heads a special team that cares for patients with the metabolic disorder at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. But as the hospital admitted increasing numbers of patients with covid-19, his caseload ballooned.

“Before, we used to manage maybe 18 patients per day,” he said. Now his team cares for as many as 30 daily.

Many of those patients had no prior history of diabetes. Some who developed elevated blood sugar while they had covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, returned to normal by the time they left the hospital. Others went home with a diagnosis of full-blown diabetes. “We’ve definitely seen an uptick in patients who are newly diagnosed,” Zilbermint said.

Although covid-19 often attacks the lungs, it is increasingly associated with a range of problems including blood clots, neurological disorders, and kidney and heart damage. Researchers say new-onset diabetes may soon be added to those complications — both Type 1, in which people cannot make the insulin needed to regulate their blood sugar, and Type 2, in which they make too little insulin or become resistant to their insulin, causing their blood sugar levels to rise. But scientists do not know whether covid-19 might hasten already developing problems or actually cause them — or both.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/02/01/covid-new-onset-diabetes/

[blueinredohio]

1. I know when my mother was in the hospital with pneumonia

she was given steroids, which made her sugar go sky high. She had to take insulin. She had never been diabetic nor was she after the hospital stay.

[abqtommy]

2. Thanks for that info. The more we understand this the better off we are.

[Massacure]

3. Steroids are well known to cause insulin resistance.

My dad has both diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. When he was first diagnosed with arthritis his rheumatologists wanted to use prednisone in my dads treatment and the doctor warned him that it would increase his insulin needs. Neither one of them really quite realized just how much it would increase it though, and they quickly determined that medication to be non-viable. Now my dad uses Humira (which his insurance pays several thousand dollars a month for). When my dad told that story to his endocrinologist, she laughed and said something along the lines of "That sounds about right."

[uponit7771]

4. Anti inflammatory steroids will do JUST THAT give type 2. There needs to be a LOT of what taken when

... those kinds of steroids are given.