B.C. researchers find COVID-19 infections increase risk of diabetes

A team of health researchers in British Columbia has come to the same conclusion as other scientists, but in a much larger study, finding people who’d become infected with COVID-19 were at much higher risk of diabetes.

The study, titled "Association of COVID-19 Infection With Incident Diabetes" and published in the Journal of American Medicine Network came to the conclusion after studying 629,935 British Columbians, some of whom tested positive for the coronavirus, and some who didn’t from Jan. 1, 2020 to Dec. 31, 2021. 

“In this cohort study, SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a higher risk of diabetes and may have contributed to a 3 per cent to 5 per cent excess burden of diabetes at a population level,” wrote the study’s authors.

“Our study highlights the importance of health agencies and clinicians being aware of the potential long-term consequences of COVID-19 and monitoring people after COVID-19 infection for new-onset diabetes for timely diagnosis and treatment.”

That means overall, people who got COVID-19 in that time frame had a 15 to 20 per cent greater chance of developing diabetes.

The provincial health officer called the study important but downplayed potential concerns for the broader population, describing it as only a slight increase for most people — with the greatest risk for people who were sicker with COVID-19 and likely overweight. Men were far more likely to develop it than women. 

“It was only associated with people who had not received the vaccine,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, who noted that the study didn’t determine whether obesity or other factors played a role. “COVID infections, particularly before omicron, can lead to long-term impacts on different body organs and in this case may have had some impact on the pancreas and the cells that produce insulin.”

ANOTHER EXPERT WEIGHS IN

CTV News wanted an impartial interpretation of the study, asking Dr. Eric Topol to weigh in. The cardiologist and Scripps Research Translational Institute Founder and Director is one of the most-cited medical researchers in medicine, publishing 1,300 peer-reviewed articles. 

“We should be concerned (about the B.C. study findings),” he said. “It's not a panic attack but it means that this is a significant condition that puts people at risk of having diabetes.”

Topol suggested the key takeaway from the research is that doctors should consider diabetes as more common than they might otherwise expect, and should consider whether it’s a factor for people facing long covid symptoms.

“There's a cumulative risk with additional infections,” said the researcher. “The only good thing is that some of the people have recovered, they manifest diabetes and then they got better.”

He also pointed out this is the twelfth study linking COVID infections to later diabetes diagnoses with “a consistent pattern”: Those who are younger, female, not obese, or with mild illnesses are less likely to develop diabetes afterward, but that there’s still a significant chance.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

The study’s authors concluded with the statement that our healthcare system and frontline workers consider the implications for our healthcare system, and Henry said the province is already working to better use existing staff and resources to serve more patients. 

She also acknowledged that while the acute symptoms of a COVID-19 infection are typically brief, the longer-term impacts are increasingly evident. 

“It's not just affecting the lungs,” said Henry. “We know it can lead to heart disease, we know that people who have post-Covid symptoms have things like neurological issues, they have fatigue and brain fog and some of the other things that we have seen are related to things like diabetes.” 

Despite that, she is defending her decision to remove public health orders for mandatory masking from medical settings, suggesting optional masking is enough given vaccination levels and previous infections with the virus. 

“It's not over,” said Topol of the pandemic. “We have a lot of people who are still suffering with long covid, with diabetes and with many other conditions and so we need to continue to respect this virus for what it can do.”