Anca Pantea Stoian, MD, PhD, Yajnavalka Banerjee, MD, PhD,
Ali A. Rizvi, MD, PhD, and Manfredi Rizzo, MD, PhD. Diabetes and the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Insights from Recent Experience Might Guide Future Management. Metab Syndr Relat Disord. 2020 Apr 8.
Abstract
COVID-19 is an acronym formed by ‘‘CO’’ for corona, ‘‘VI’’ for virus, and ‘‘D’’ for disease. The ‘‘19’’ represents 2019— the year when the infection started. This new disease was unknown before the outbreak began in China in the city of Wuhan, and now it is a serious health problem worldwide.1 Indeed, COVID-19 is a rapidly spreading communicable disease, and its severity has varied from mild self-limiting flu-like illness to fulminant pneumonia, respiratory failure, and death.2 Older people and those with chronic diseases, including diabetes are more likely to develop more severe symptoms and complications. Therefore, in order to limit the spread of the disease, millions of people have now been forced indoors and into isolation or quarantine. Yang et al. recently published a small but very informative systematic review and meta-analysis on the prevalence of comorbidities associated with COVID-19 infection in China, and they reported that diabetes was prevalent in 8% of cases, highlighting that this is somewhat in line with the prevalence of diabetes (10.9%) in Chinese adults
