Type 2 diabetes rates in US youth rose 62% after Covid pandemic began

I agree here. An 18% increase in T1D is alarming as that is triggered by an immune system reaction.

Conversely the rate of increase in Type 1 was much smaller then Type 2.

> Relative to 2016 to 2019, in 2020 to 2021, the incidence of new-onset type 1 diabetes was 17% higher (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 1.17). The incidence was higher among patients aged 10 to 19 years (IRR,1.17), boys (IRR, 1.18), and Hispanic patients (1.21).

> Rates of type 2 diabetes were 62% higher (IRR, 1.62) in 2020 to 2021 than in 2016 to 2019. The incidence of type 2 diabetes rose from 14.8 to 24.7 per 100,000 person-years over that time.

I have a friend (fit, healthy male of 28) who suddenly lost a whole lot of weight and then was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, not too long after having COVID - may have been a coincidence, but it is suspicious...

I assume the parent comment was only referring to Type 2 diabetes and made a sibling comment to that affect. However, while we're on the topic, I suppose one can ask why some people have the autoimmune reaction that triggers T1D. Presumably there are genetic, lifestyle, or environmental factors that lead to it, just like celiac or Hashimoto's, etc.

I’m curious. How do you know it was COVID? I too was diagnosed pre-diabetic post-COVID. No longer the case now. However, I’m not sure how I could ever make the direct attribution to COVID?

Thank you for your opinion.

As stated in the article:

    ... and may lead to diabetes.

'May' is a qualifying word and that sentence is immediately followed by:

    Additionally, diabetes risk factors may have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic including ...

(Which I think most people would interpret as "nothing is entirely certain thus far, it appears to be a complex multifactor kind of thing".)

FWiW I addressed the title and the article's primary focus, Type-2 diabetes, and linked to detailed comparative factor breakdowns for Type-2 diabetes.

Nothing in this paper is anywhere close to establishing causality, it's an interesting observation that merits further study.

We should also note that the authors offer alternative possibilities in the discussion such as increased/early diagnosis.

Interestingly, the 10-19 T1D IRR declines below prepandemic levels in Q4 2021 which would be supportive of this hypothesis for this age group however more follow-up is needed to see how the trend evolves.

> coronavirus and many other viruses can trigger

Does COVID trigger this at a higher rate than other viruses? Or did the overall rate of viral infection increase due to covid?

I suspect the answers are “we don’t know” and “not substantially”.

> To be sort of nitpicky: the underlying study [0] does not argue ...

To be sort of nitpicky at the time I made that comment there were only four (IIRC) other comments here all of which were making direct causal connections.

It was less the article I was addressing and more those commenters that felt the need to jump straight into "COVID ate my homework" stories.

I can see that both yourself and I appear to agree that covid-19 is a complex disease with a great many correlations and it certainly factors into to at least some kind of indirect connection.

Of interest, perhaps, is this quote from the link I provided above:

    After adjusting for differences in the age structure of the population, the proportion of people living with type 2 diabetes almost doubled between 2000 and 2013, and has remained relatively stable in the last decade.

There was no covid in the post 2000 decade, something in that time period caused type-2 diabetes to double (rise by 100%) all the same.

I hope you and I both share a similar degree of wariness towards the conclusions of meta-analysis reviews.

People also ate out less and had more time to cook meals at home instead of eating highly processed foods bought from supermarkets.

How so? Ate more healthily at home, walked more, got outside more generally. Physical health likely improved with lockdowns.

On the other hand you had more free time, because there was no commute. My fitness went UP due to homeoofice and lockdowns. I also started to eat healthier, simply because I had more and easier control over what I eat.

The T2 patients weren’t fatter or more diabetic. There were just 62% more of them.

> So you LITERALLY

I was using the collective “we”.

My family had a yard and had kids playing outside. We eventually just moved to somewhere not doing any of the restrictions.

BUT where I was living did restrict severely for a prolonged period.

Sure, glad you did that. Like I said, we were outside in the yard and very active.

I can easily imagine plenty of peers & neighbors not letting their kids out to play. That’s how it was where I lived. I’m sure play dates were canceled. I’m sure parents staying at home didn’t get their kids as much exercise as gym class. I’m also confident many parents just gave their kids tablets to entertain them.

You mention yourself missed sports practice. At a massive scale many children in the margins do get more overweight and that correlates with increased type 2 diabetes.

Yeah basically surveillance bias, it's mentioned as a possibility in the discussion.

T2D feels like it could be a combination of both, there was certainly an increase in metabolic risk factors as well.

The authors also mention acute stress response may have contributed to increased detection of previously undiagnosed diabetes.

The continuing trend will be interesting to see. For example T1D in the 0-9 group reaches a 5 year low in Q4 2021. I think it's too early to conclude much, we'll better understand the ramifications of the pandemic and virus in another 2-5 years.

> Within KPSC, while there were no initiatives for increased diabetes screening among at-risk patients, the shift to increased virtual care allowed for better electronic monitoring of patients’ health status, which may account for some additional patients with diabetes detected during the pandemic years.

> Acute stress of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been shown to increase blood glucose levels, and individuals with previously undiagnosed diabetes may receive a diagnosis when presenting to hospitals for infection-related care.

> would only impact that 8 hour period of each kid's day

That 8 hour period of each kid's day where they're surrounded by dozens of other potential disease vectors. The period before they go home and infect their parents, and potentially kill their grandparents. It's expensive but let's be frank, we're okay with thousands of people dying annually because we don't want to spend the money to do anything about it.

Stop. Getting. Infected.

There is no living with the pandemic.

I am literally advocating for preventing, or at least reducing, spread in schools in this very comment, and as a parent, have skin in the game. Endemic doesn't mean harmless.

It's endemic and impossible to get rid of. This is demonstrably true simply because animals can catch it, and we can't do anything about that.

And, of course, it's still wherever it originally came from.

It's such a strange experience since the pandemic encountering folks like you and some sibling commenters, who, because a few people in their immediate social group, "seem fine", dismiss the outcomes of millions who died, or struggle with Long COVID, or all the accumulating science documenting the post-acute conditions this virus causes. Other viruses cause post-acute complications too, so it's not even new, but for this virus people really need to put it in the box of 'what me worry?' for some reason. Three years ago I would've expected different from the educated and generally cynical/skeptical HN crowd, but no longer I guess.