In: Nursing
Why are diabetic patients at high risk to develop COVID-19 complications and why is there a higher mortality rate among them?
People with diabetes do face a higher chance of experiencing serious complications from COVID -19. In general people with diabetes are more likely to experience severe symptoms and complications when infected with a virus.
The risk of getting very sick from COVID-19 is likely to be lower if diabetes is well managed. When people with diabetes do not manage their diabetes well and experience fluctuating blood sugar, they are at risk for a number of diabetes related complications. Having heart disease or other complications in addition to diabetes could worsen the chance of getting ill from COVID-19 like, other viral infections, because your body's ability to fight off an infection is compromised.
Viral infections can also increase inflammation or internal swelling in people with diabetes. This is also caused by above-target blood sugars and both could contribute to more severe complications.
People with diabetes with COVID-19 are at a greater risk of worse prognosis and mortality. The poorer prognosis of people with diabetes is the likely consequence of the syndromic nature of the disease: hyperglycaemia, older age, comorbidities, and in particular hypertension, obesity and cardiovascular disease all contribute to increase the risk. It is, however, more complicated as it requires factoring in social factors such as deprivation and ethnicity as well as factors that becomes relavent at the time that a patient with COVID-19 needs to be managed.
Careful assessment of the many components that contribute to poor prognosis with COVID-19 in patients with diabetes might represents the best, if not only way to overcome the current situation and enable our health systems to be ready to face any future challenges in a prompt and effective manner.