COVID would increase the risk of diabetes, particularly among young people under the age of 18, according to a study published by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.
“There may have been more people who developed type 1 diabetes during COVID, and we know that, unfortunately, the virus is now able to go and damage the cells that produce insulin,” explains Dr. Rémi Rabasa-Lhoret, endocrinologist at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute.
In Canada, 400,000 people live with type 1 diabetes.
The Clinical Research Institute of Montreal is on the alert, because already, all the costs related to diabetes are estimated at 3 billion dollars per year in Quebec.
“It’s been exactly 100 years in Canada, month for month, that we first treated a patient with insulin. Before, it was a disease that was constantly fatal,” says Dr. Rabasa-Lhoret.
Poorly controlled, the disease can lead to kidney problems and dialysis, strokes, blindness.
The Institute’s specialists are currently monitoring more than 700 patients with type 1 diabetes.
Throughout the pandemic, a nutritionist and a doctor monitored patients remotely using an electronic device placed on their stomachs that continuously measured their blood sugar.
“I was lucky to keep a routine, to go to work because routines still help in managing the disease,” explains Josie Pilon, who has diabetes.
“There is also a 25% [de gens] for whom it was more difficult, often very related to mental health problems, to the distress that there may be and to the difficulty, when one is in distress, of devoting oneself to the disease, ”explains the endocrinologist.
“Being stuck at home with the kids, I couldn’t get outside as much. It was difficult to adjust, to readjust all my insulin doses according to that, ”says Nathalie Jouvet, patient of the Institute.
“Because it is perhaps easier at home, it is easier to snack. Sometimes, we feel a little isolated, we are also fed up with managing a disease that can really be managed 24 hours a day, which you have to think about all the time, all the time”, says Émeline Dagbert, patient.