There is another very good reason to vaccinate children against Sars-CoV 2: protection against diabetes, both type 1, autoimmune, and type 2. A study conducted by researchers from the Centers for Diseases Control (Cdc) of Atlanta shows a significant increase in the incidence of the disease in the 30 days following the acute phase in children and young people under the age of 18, and today it is not possible to say whether this is a consequence destined to disappear over time or whether, as it is more likely at least for form 1, of something that will turn children into chronically ill, having to control their blood sugar and take insulin for life.
In the study, published in the official body of the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the data of two large insurance archives relating to the period between March 2020 and June 2021 were examined: that of Iqvia, which contains data of over 1,700 .000 minors, and that of HealthVerity, which hosts 900,000, and the result was worrying. The first showed an increase of 2.66 times (equal to 166%) in the cases of diabetes 1 and 2 among children and young people positive to Sars-CoV 2 compared to negative ones, from the second a growth of 1.31 times ( equal to + 31%). Furthermore, in Iqvia there was also an increase of 2.16 times compared to the cases recorded among children who had had a respiratory infection not attributable to the coronavirus, confirming the specificity of the effect.
Link already demonstrated in adults
The link between blood sugar changes up to actual diabetes and coronavirus has already been shown for adults, and could be due to both the fact that Sars-CoV 2 affects the pancreas, and (in the case of type 1) to a uncontrolled immune reaction, which leads to autoimmunity, but certainly, for a child, the risk of finding himself diabetic for life – the authors comment – is far more serious than that associated with the vaccine.
Vaccine protection
The same issue of the journal also hosts a second study that should be a further stimulus to vaccinate the little ones: the Pfizer / BionTech vaccine protects 91% from the rare multisystem inflammatory syndrome, Mis-C, a condition that almost always forces hospitalization and which is at the origin of most of the very rare, but not non-existent deaths among children (over 35 those occurred in Italy, just under a thousand in the world). In this case, the data come from 24 US pediatric hospitals, from which the data of a hundred children with Mis-C were obtained, compared with those of as many boys and children with other pathologies. All 38 children with Mis-C who required invasive therapies such as intubation were unvaccinated, while for the vaccinated the course was less dramatic.
Finally, the CDCs always wanted to reassure the parents: even if everywhere there is an exponential growth of pediatric hospitalizations, this is due to the fact that children under 5 are not vaccinated and that even among those over 5 years old there are very many they are not yet, and therefore they get sick more often. The disease itself no longer seems aggressive. Meanwhile, data from a growing number of countries confirm the efficacy and safety of vaccination in the 5-11 age group. In Italy, almost 700,000 children have received the first dose, equal to about 19% of the vaccinable population: still too few.