Omicron widens racial disparity in US, Covid-related diabetes likely to be temporary: Research

According to a new study, patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms who develop diabetes during hospitalisation may only have a transient version of the condition, with their blood sugar levels returning to normal afterward. During their stay in the hospital for Covid-19 treatment, researchers looked at 594 patients who showed indications of diabetes. There were 78 patients who had never been diagnosed with diabetes before.

Many people freshly diagnosed with diabetes had less severe blood sugar concerns than patients with pre-existing illnesses. They did, however, have more severe Covid-19 symptoms.

Forty per cent of these patients went back to blood sugar levels below the diabetes cutoff roughly a year after leaving hospitals, the researchers reported in the Journal of Diabetes and Its Complications.

OMICRON and RACIAL DISPARITIES

Co-author Dr Sara Cromer of the Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital said that this suggested that the new diabetes diagnosis might be transitory and related to the acute stress of being infected with Covid-19, Reuters reported.

The results suggest that insulin deficiency, in case it occurred, is not permanent in general, Dr Cromer said. She added that these patients might only need insulin or other similar medications for a brief period and it was critical that physicians closely followed them to see when their conditions improved.

According to new research, the increase in Omicron-led infections in the United States, as well as the higher toll on minority populations, is the latest illustration of racial imbalance during the epidemic.

When the Delta strain was dominant, about one person in every 2,000 in the United States was infected for the first time every day. In January, when Omicron became the prevalent strain, researchers discovered that roughly 8 to 10 people were infected per day.

The researchers published on medRxiv, ahead of peer review, that Omicron expanded racial gaps even more.

During the Delta strain’s dominance, the infection rate among Black patients was 1.3 to 1.4 times greater than white patients. With Omicron, the rate of infection jumped to 3 to 4 times higher, Reuters reported. Among Hispanics, the rate of Delta infection was 1.6 to 1.8 times higher than non-Hispanics. This number grew to three times higher with Omicron.

The Omicron strain also hit children. The rate of infection in January in children under 5 was the highest at 22 a day per 2,000.

733,509 Delta cases and 147,964 Omicron cases were used to compile the results. The Omicron variation, on the other hand, resulted in a considerable reduction in emergency room visits, hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions, and the need for mechanical breathing. Hispanics and Blacks had more emergency visits and required more intense care. The study’s participants may not be representative of all patients in the United States, according to the researchers.