For people with diabetes and COVID-19, blood sugar control is key

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Northerner

Northerner

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A study reported in the journal Cell Metabolism on April 30 adds to the evidence that people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at greater risk of a poor outcome should they become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But there is some encouraging news: people with T2D whose blood sugar is well controlled fare much better than those with more poorly controlled blood sugar.

"We were surprised to see such favourable outcomes in well-controlled blood glucose group among patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing type 2 diabetes," says senior author Hongliang Li of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University. "Considering that people with diabetes had much higher risk for death and various complications, and there are no specific drugs for COVID-19, our findings indicate that controlling blood glucose well may act as an effective auxiliary approach to improve the prognosis of patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing diabetes."

www.sciencedaily.com

For people with diabetes and COVID-19, blood sugar control is key

A new study adds to the evidence that people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at greater risk of a poor outcome should they become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But there is some encouraging news: people with T2D whose blood sugar is well controlled fare much better than those with...
www.sciencedaily.com

No sh*t, Sherlock 🙄
 
Northerner said:
A study reported in the journal Cell Metabolism on April 30 adds to the evidence that people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at greater risk of a poor outcome should they become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But there is some encouraging news: people with T2D whose blood sugar is well controlled fare much better than those with more poorly controlled blood sugar.

"We were surprised to see such favourable outcomes in well-controlled blood glucose group among patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing type 2 diabetes," says senior author Hongliang Li of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University. "Considering that people with diabetes had much higher risk for death and various complications, and there are no specific drugs for COVID-19, our findings indicate that controlling blood glucose well may act as an effective auxiliary approach to improve the prognosis of patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing diabetes."

www.sciencedaily.com

For people with diabetes and COVID-19, blood sugar control is key

A new study adds to the evidence that people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at greater risk of a poor outcome should they become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But there is some encouraging news: people with T2D whose blood sugar is well controlled fare much better than those with...
www.sciencedaily.com

No sh*t, Sherlock 🙄
Click to expand...
I read the original article detailing the full study from Cell Metabolism, and I’m sorry, I can’t now find the link. But the interesting bit in the footnotes about limitations of the study mentioned that they’d excluded Type1 from the study because they didn’t have enough Type 1s in hospital. Make of that what you will, there may just be too small a percentage of Type 1s in the general population, but at least it looks like they’re not all ending up in hospital!
 
I looked at this article yesterday. It appears to refer to glycemic control whilst in hospital with Covid 19 and better outcomes if it doesn’t go above 10 during that time. Surely lots of diabetics go over 10 whilst battling serious illness?
With regard to Type 1 as we are a relatively small part of the population it probably is more difficult to study with Covid, especially in countries where Type 1’s might have much shorter life expectancy generally due to limited access to insulin etc. This was brought home to me a few years ago by a friend from China and the problems her Type 1 cousin had with accessing medication.
 
Northerner said:
But there is some encouraging news: people with T2D whose blood sugar is well controlled fare much better than those with more poorly controlled blood sugar.
Click to expand...

I wonder if that's more causation or just correlation? (That is, someone who's controlling their diabetes well is probably generally healthier than someone who isn't. Not that that alters the obvious recommendation that we should try and control our diabetes well.)
 
They aim for 5 when you're on a sliding scale.
 
Northerner said:
Considering that people with diabetes had much higher risk for death and various complications, and there are no specific drugs for COVID-19,
Click to expand...

Wasn‘t too keen on that sentence myself 😱
 
I'm with Bruce on this one. It may well be a correlation rather than causation. People with badly controlled T2 may very well have other significant problems like obesity, hypertension and kidney disease. Pick any one of those for a risk of a worse effect of coronavirus.

There was an interesting article in last week's New Scientist about this very subject. Did you know that in Australia, there is no doubt that on days when more ice creams are sold from beachside vendors, there are more shark attacks? Does that mean that eating ice cream makes you more likely to be attacked by a shark? Folk with bad asthma are more likely to survive a coronavirus infection. That seems counter intuitive, but it's true, because such folk go straight to intensive care.

Both selling more ice creams, and more shark attacks are caused by there being more folk on the beach, though there is an undeniable correlation.

A similar correlation is seen in the increase of 5G towers and the increase in coronavirus infection.

Doctors are as bad as the general public in confusing correlation and causation. There is no doubt that BAME health workers are more likely to die from coronavirus than others. That too, is more likely to be correlation than causation. There is growing evidence that BAME health workers, even doctors, are less likely to have adequate PPE. Back of the queue. Nothing to do with genetic differences.

Also, did you know that women tend to get milder coronavirus effects then men? (Think Boris and his bide-in). Bet you don't know that the genes that control antibody production are in the X chromosome. Women have two X chromosomes, men have 1. The same effect was seen in the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918/1919, though nobody then knew why.
 
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