Experts warn that children infected with Covid-19 are at danger of developing diabetes.
Covid-19 may increase the incidence of diabetes in children, according to a recent study published in the United States, which has sounded the alarm in medical circles.
Dr Sharon Saydah and her colleagues from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered that children under the age of 18 who have recovered from a Covid-19 infection are more likely to acquire diabetes than those who have never had the virus.
Malaysian health officials have every reason to be alarmed about the results of the CDC, which were released on January 7. Admissions to paediatric critical care units among children diagnosed with category four and five Covid-19 have surged by 94%, according to a post on the Ministry of Health’s official Facebook account on March 12.
Health professionals are particularly concerned about the recent increase in type 1 diabetes incidence among Malaysian children.
According to the CDC, children who had a Covid-19 infection had a 166 percent increased risk of developing diabetes than those who did not. It was also discovered that during the pre-pandemic period, new diabetes diagnoses were 116 percent more likely to arise among people with Covid-19 than among those with acute respiratory infections.
When the epidemic reached its apex in the United Kingdom in 2020, the medical journal Diabetes Care recorded an upsurge in type 1 diabetes incidence among youngsters.
Diabetes among children in Malaysia is, in general, lower than that of Scandinavian nations and countries in the temperate zone. But paediatric endocrinologists are concerned over the higher number of children being diagnosed with diabetes now compared with the pre-pandemic period. Experts were unable to determine whether the increase in diabetes cases was caused by Covid-19 because not all diabetic patients were tested for the infection.
Covid-19 can give rise to other diseases such as diabetes and it is best for people in all age groups to take the necessary preventive action including getting the vaccine, he said. The symptoms that need to be taken heed of are frequent urination, increased thirst and hunger, fatigue, abdominal pain and nausea.
More than one million children in Malaysia aged between five and 11 have been vaccinated under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children. One of the reported side effects is myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle, but only 11 cases have been reported in the US where 8.7 million doses of the Comirnaty vaccine have been administered.
