- Some COVID-19 patients have been developing symptoms of diabetes after infection.
- This has scientists asking if COVID-19 could trigger diabetes.
- Early findings suggest that the coronavirus could be prompting the pancreas to self-destruct.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The relationship between COVID-19 and diabetes is poorly understood and scientists don't yet have definitive answers.
But as the pandemic progressed, a growing number of reports suggested that people who caught COVID-19 were noticing diabetes symptoms for the first time. It is too soon to say whether the condition is permanent.
"Clearly there's a link, there's some sort of mechanism that makes the diseases fuel one another," Francesco Rubino chair of metabolic surgery at King's College London, told Insider. "The question is whether new-onset diabetes could be caused by this virus."
Diabetes is an excess of blood sugar, caused when the body is either not producing enough insulin, the hormone which lowers the blood sugar, or is becoming resistant to it.
One theory was that the body could be confusing pancreas cells for the coronavirus, and trying to destroy them. This would disrupt insulin supply and cause diabetes, the scientists thought.
But research suggests something else could be going on: the virus might be altering the pancreas, prompting it to destroy itself.
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/people-developing-diabetes-covid-19-095724274.html
