Research Shows Children and Teens With COVID More Likely to Get Diagnosed With Diabetes
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a new study showing that children and teens up to age 18 who are infected with COVID-19 are more likely than those who are not infected to be diagnosed with diabetes a month after having COVID-19.
To conduct the study, the CDC looked at two data sets from insurance claim databases from March 1, 2020, to March 1, 2021, regarding diabetes diagnoses in people under 18 years old. The researchers found a 2.6-fold increase in diabetes diagnoses among children who had been infected with COVID-19 versus those who had not.
The research also showed that a diabetes diagnosis after having COVID-19 was 30% more common in children who were infected than those who were not. The research did not draw a line between the type of diabetes, as type 1 typically appears earlier in life from genetic disorders, while type 2 can develop later in life based on choices about diet and exercise.
Currently, about 210,000 Americans under the age of 20 are estimated to have diabetes, with 18,200 estimated to be type 1 and 5,800 with type 2, according to data from the American Diabetes Association.
“These findings underscore the importance of COVID-19 prevention among all age groups, including vaccination for all eligible children and adolescents, and chronic disease prevention and treatment,” write CDC researchers in the study.
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