Until now, form 1, insulin-dependent, and form 2, often linked to obesity and, once diagnosed, could not be cured, were known of diabetes mellitus. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, one has emerged third form of diabetes, a real Long Covid disease, which can occur even months after contracting the virus. The revolutionary news, given that diabetes is characterized by being a chronic disease, is that ‘the latest arrival’, the Diabecovid, if caught early, can be cured until remission. The study was presented at the XXI Congress of Simdo, the Italian Society of Metabolism, Diabetes and Obesity chaired by Doctor Vincenzo Provenzano, which was celebrated at the Unahotels Capotaormina, with 200 experts from all over Italy and abroad and 30 companies.
Diabecovid has an important impact on the national picture of the disease, ie by 18 percent more (10 percent men and 8 percent women), compared to 8 percent of people who already have diabetes in Italy. So, the new cases add to the 4 million already established, the million people who have diabetes and don’t know it, and the 3 million people with pre-diabetes. “A social emergency is then created – said Vincenzo Provenzano, head of Diabetology at the Civic Hospital of Partinico, director of the same Covid center and president of Simdo – both for numbers and complications, such as difficulties in having children , blindness, dialysis, amputation of the lower limbs “.
Diabecovid was discovered thanks to the birth of Long Covid clinics. Experts already during the epidemic had observed a close relationship between Covid and diabetes, affected subjects, in fact, tended to have a worse prognosis and, those with decompensated diabetes, often ended up in resuscitation. One of the diseases of Long Covid that has emerged is precisely a form of secondary diabetes, which begins both in form 1, insulin dependent, and in form 2, that is the classic diabetes due to obesity, and in a new one, of diabetes 2 with onset early.
“The alarm we are launching, also through the XXI Simdo Congress – concluded Provenzano – is to pay attention to these new forms of diabetes, to those who have had Covid even in a paucisymptomatic way, urging them to check their blood sugar in the presence of symptoms such as fatigue, loss of appetite, weight loss, listlessness, to intervene as soon as possible because, the only positive side of these forms of diabetes post Covid, or Diabecovid, is that, if treated in a massive and timely manner, they manage to regress going into remission ” .