covid-19

Diabetes patients more vulnerable to COVID-19, American Diabetes Association

Diabetes COVID-19

American Scientists have discovered individuals with type 1 and type 2 diabetes infected with COVID-19 are three times more likely to have a severe illness or require hospitalization.

In people with type 1 diabetes, the insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells have been destroyed, meaning they cannot process the glucose their bodies need for fuel and the sugar accumulation in the blood. In type 2 diabetes, people cannot make enough insulin to convert glucose into energy or they grow insensitive to the insulin they make.

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In a journal, Diabetes Care of American Diabetes Association, the research has been published in this regard. Type 2 diabetes patients have already been declared to be in the dangerous condition to be attacked by the coronavirus. In this recent research, the type 1 patients too have been declared at danger to be the victims of this lethal virus.

During the research process, the cases of 6000 patients who were admitted to 127 hospitals and medical centers were examined by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers and it was found out that out of these patients, those patients, suffering from any kind of diabetes, had worsened conditions as compared to those who did not have the symptoms of diabetes1 or diabetes2.

There are no easy answers to the coronavirus pandemic but for people with diabetes, it is dismaying difficult to untangle the thicket of biological and socioeconomic factors that make them more likely to suffer severe illness and die should they catch the virus that causes Covid-19.

That leaves prevention, controlling blood sugar through diet, exercise, monitoring, and medication as the leading tactic to protect people until a successful vaccine is proven to work in people with diabetes too.

Data from the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show more than three-quarter of people who dies from Covid-19 has at least one preexisting condition. Overall, diabetes was noted as an underlying condition for approximately 4 to 10 patients. Among people younger than 65 who died from the infection, about half had diabetes.

On the basis of this important research, it has been advised to all policymakers all over the world to prioritize vaccination to those, suffering from type1 or type 2 diabetes.

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