Last weekend in The Telegraph there was an article about Corona Virus, well there’s a surprise. What was surprising was that it was talking about the virus causing diabetes. Yes you heard that right, causing diabetes.
There has been a lot in the press about diabetics being at greater risk from the virus but this is new. To start with the doctors thought that these people were undiagnosed prior to their admission to hospital but the numbers were too high and these patients appeared to be developing Type 1 Diabetes rather than Type 2.
Simply put – Type 1 is where the cells in the pancreas that are responsible for producing insulin gradually slow down and then stop working and Type 2 is where the mechanisms we use to metabolise glucose are not working properly even though we are producing insulin.
A senior endocrinologist at King’s College London reported that some patients had a predisposition for the disease and the damage caused to their metabolism by Covid 19 caused further dysfunction and clinically apparent disease when others have no particular issues and Covid-19 was efficient enough to generate diabetes by itself.
In the article it says that research is showing ACE-2, the protein that binds to the virus and allows it to enter human cells, is not just located in the lungs but also in organs and tissues involved in glucose metabolism causing dysfunction in glucose metabolism.
The research continues.