“The incidence of type 1 diabetes in children increased during the COVID-19 pandemic,1-4 but studies have not discriminated between children with and without infection. We analyzed a large population-based, individual-patient data set that included diagnoses of COVID-19 to determine whether there was a temporal association between COVID-19 and type 1 diabetes in children.”
This is an interesting study that reflects some anecdotal stories I’ve heard from doctors, where there’s increased amounts of diagnoses of Type 1 Diabetes in the past few years. While this focuses on children (where viral infections are common triggers for T1DM, I’ve seen and heard of adults being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, generally after a COVID infection. It calls into question the autoimmune effects of COVID that we might not yet know, especially in regards to diabetes.
I would also be interested to see the incidence rates of other autoimmune disorders with the same association parameters. Diabetes mellitus is notable in how profound its effect is, but there are a wide variety of other autoimmune disorders with more subtle sequelae that would very likely share features with this phenomenon.