People should be aware of the risk of diabetes following COVID-19 infection, a Taichung-based doctor said.
Tsai Chung-huang (蔡崇煌), a doctor of family medicine at Cheng Ching Hospital’s Chung Kang Branch, said that a young engineer, who 18 months ago had COVID-19, began experiencing itchy skin, for which he went to a clinic, to no avail.
Following that, the engineer lost 10kg of body weight in two months, Tsai said.
The man also reported an abnormally high appetite, which did not halt his weight loss, Tsai added.
A blood test revealed that the patient before a meal had a blood sugar level of 425 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), which is four to six times the normal value, Tsai said.
The patient’s glycated hemoglobin level was 13.8 percent, higher than the average 4.2 percent to 5.7 percent range, he said.
The engineer did not have anyone in his family with diabetes and displayed normal blood lipid and blood pressure despite being overweight with a body mass index of 28, Tsai said.
The patient was treated with a combination of insulin shots and orally taken diabetes drug metformin for two weeks, which reduced his blood sugar to about 130mg/dL and glycated hemoglobin level to 6.1 percent, Tsai said.
The engineer has been taking medication and paying attention to his diet, he added.
Citing new research from the US, the UK and South Korea, Tsai said people who had contracted COVID-19 have a higher risk of diabetes.
A large case study in the US showed that 1.1 percent of confirmed cases with light to moderate symptoms and 1.4 percent of the ones with severe symptoms were diagnosed with diabetes in the 180 days following their COVID-19 infection, he said.
In severe cases, people with newly developed diabetes also had life-threatening ketoacidosis, Tsai said.
What links COVID-19 to diabetes is probably kidney damage caused by SARS-CoV-2, which might disrupt the production of insulin crucial to regulating blood sugar levels, he said.
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