Post-Covid diabetes can be temporary: Research

BENGALURU: A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) could help thousands of patients in Karnataka who have been diagnosed with diabetes as a result of the Covid-19 virus. The study discovered that the emergence of diabetes may be a transitory form of the disease caused by the viral infection’s acute stress, with normal blood sugar levels returning after a few days or months.

“This suggests that newly diagnosed diabetes may be a transitory condition related to the acute stress of Covid-19 infection,” explained Sara Cromer, MD, an investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Medicine-Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, as well as the lead author of a study published in the Journal of Diabetes and Its Complications.

The study’s findings revealed that acute insulin resistance was the primary cause of newly diagnosed diabetes in most Covid-19 patients, and that insulin deficit, if it occurred at all, was usually not lasting. Individuals with new onset diabetes had higher inflammatory indicators and were admitted to hospital ICUs more frequently than Covid-19 patients with pre-existing diabetes, according to the MGH study.

Several doctors in Karnataka have also discovered examples where patients only required insulin or other medications for a brief period of time. “These patients may require insulin or medicine for a short period of time,” the paper adds, “therefore physicians must closely monitor them to see whether and when their diseases improve.”

After a year of insulin or pharmaceutical treatment, people who developed diabetes with Covid-19 had normal blood sugar levels, according to the study’s cohort. Covid-19, according to endocrinologists in Karnataka, may force people with pre-existing but undetected diabetes to see a doctor for the first time, allowing their blood sugar issue to be clinically diagnosed.

Dr Mahesh D M, Consultant, Endocrinology, Aster CMI Hospital, remarked, “It is somewhat true that some people develop diabetes during Covid illness, excluding those who may have underlying diabetes that was accidentally diagnosed during Covid illness.”

Doctors fear that the steroids used in Covid-19 therapy may cause sugar levels to spike in some individuals, perhaps leading to diabetes.

“The diabetes may be temporary in patients who are having mild increase in sugar or it maybe steroid-induced. We are still not sure about the temporary and permanent diabetes in such patients,” Dr. Raghu J, HOD and Senior Consultant – Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease Specialist, said.