Doctors suggest COVID-19 could cause diabetes

A cohort of scientists from across the world believe that there is a growing body of evidence that COVID-19 can cause diabetes in some patients.

Prof Francesco Rubino, from King’s College London, is leading the call for a full investigation into a possible link between the two diseases. Having seen a rise in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in people who have caught coronavirus, some doctors are even considering the possibility that the virus ‒ by disrupting sugar metabolism ‒ could be inducing an entirely new form of diabetes.

Rubino and others set up a registry to start pooling and analysing reports of cases. The principal investigators of the registry which has received reports from more than 350 individual clinicians who suspect they have encountered one or more cases of Covid-induced diabetes — have said the numbers were hard to ignore.

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen more cases of patients that had either developed diabetes during the Covid-19 experience, or shortly after that. We are now starting to think the link is probably true – there is an ability of the virus to cause a malfunctioning of sugar metabolism,” said Rubino.

If there was a biological link, it would be difficult to prove without a substantial database, he noted. “We said it’s worth embarking on an investigation because this – especially given the size of the pandemic – could be a significant problem.”

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Source: The Guardian, 19 March 2021