A surge in new diabetes cases among children was recorded in Covid, almost doubling in the first year of the pandemic alone. This is what a multicentre study conducted in the USA and published in the Journal of Pediatrics by experts from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The role of lifestyle
According to experts, the reason is not too much linked to the virus itself, but to the drastic change in lifestyles that characterized the pandemic period, with the closure of schools, the increase in sedentary lifestyle, the greater consumption of junk foods and the reduction sports activities.
Experts compared the number of new diabetes cases among children in the pre-pandemic period (1 March 2018 through 29 February 2020) with the number of new cases in the first year of the pandemic (1 March 2020 to 28 February 2021). Researchers identified 3,113 pediatric patients (8-21 years) during the pandemic period at 24 medical centers across the United States.
Covid and diabetes 1, cases with complications in children increased during the lockdown
During the pandemic, more males than females
The average number of new diagnoses per year in the pre-pandemic period was 825 and rose to 1,463 during the first year of the pandemic, an increase of 77% (almost a doubling of new cases). During the first year of the pandemic, 55% of new cases involved males, exactly the opposite of what was seen before Covid. “This was one of the most unusual aspects of the study,” said the pediatric endocrinologist Risa Wolf, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, first author of the work. “Typically we see more girls than boys with a new diagnosis of diabetes, we don’t understand why this trend reversal.”
Recovered from Covid they get diabetes: it happened to American children and adolescents
by Viola Rita
