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COVID-19 infection appears to significantly raise the risk for diabetes by about 40% at 1 year, indicate new data from a very large Veterans Administration population.
"If patients have a prior history of COVID-19, that's a risk factor for diabetes and they should certainly be screened for diabetes," study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a nephrologist and chief of research and development at VA St Louis Health Care, Missouri, told Medscape Medical News.
"It's still premature to make guidelines. I think we have to process the data landscape to understand what this all really means, but it's really, really clear that all these roads are pointing in one direction, that COVID-19 increases the risk of diabetes up to a year later. The risk is small but not negligible," he said.
The database includes over 8 million people and 180,000 with a prior COVID-19 diagnosis. Significantly increased diabetes risks compared to those not infected ranging from 31% to more than double were found in a subgroup analysis based on diabetes risk score, body mass index, age, race, prediabetes status, and deprivation level, and even after adjusting for confounding factors.
