Cases of type 1 diabetes in young people in a small UK study nearly doubled during the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the UK, suggesting an imaginable link between the two diseases requiring further research, scientists said on Tuesday.
Although the study is based only on a handful of cases, it is the first to relate COVID-19 and type 1 diabetes that was just emerged in children, and doctors are attentive, researchers at Imperial College London said.
“Our research shows that the peak of the pandemic, the number of new cases of type 1 diabetes in young people, was abnormally higher in two of the hospitals (which we studied) compared to previous years,” said Karen Logan, who co-directed the study.
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“When we investigated further, some of these young people had active coronaviruses or had been exposed to the virus in the past.”
Logan said previous reports from China and Italy had pointed out that young people were diagnosed with new-evolving type 1 diabetes, the pandemic, in hospitals.
The study, published in the journal Diabetes Care, analysed the knowledge of 30 young people in London hospitals diagnosed with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes at the first peak of the pandemic, about double the number of cases observed in this era in recent years.
21 of the young men were tested for COVID-19 or tested for antibodies to see if they had been exposed to the virus, and five tested positive for a new coronavirus infection.
Type 1 diabetes causes the destruction of insulin-generating cells in the pancreas, preventing the frame from generating enough insulin to regulate blood sugar.The Imperial team said an imaginable explanation may be that the complex protein of the new coronavirus can simply attack insulin.generating cells in the pancreas.
“More studies are needed to determine if there is a definitive link, Array …but in the meantime, we expect doctors to be aware of this,” Logan said.
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