COVID-19 can cause diabetes and damage to the pancreas, expert warns

The disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 has left health havoc on those who suffer from it, including high glucose and damage to the pancreas, said Josafat Camacho, medical president of the Mexican Diabetes Federation,

“In patients who came to hospitals to be treated for being infected with COVID-19, found that many of them arrived with high glucose levels, without having diabetes ”, he warned.

The specialist explained that the presence of this disease could be attributed to a destruction of the pancreas by the coronavirus or the pharmacological treatment with cortisone that is used to reduce inflammation in infected patients.

“Although we also know that half of diabetics do not know that they are and perhaps they are detected at the time of being admitted for COVID-19,” he argued.

He stated that there are currently enough elements to determine that SARS-CoV-2 affects the pancreas and destroys it.

“It has been shown that there is destruction of beta cells. Then we would be talking about a new diabetes secondary to COVID-19 ″, he raised.

However, he accepted that it is still too early to know if this diabetes will be temporary or already a lifelong condition.

Almost two years after the start of the pandemic in Mexico, more than 3.8 million Mexicans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, while 290,374 people have died from the virus.

The expert recalled that diabetes is a disease that, if not controlled properly, reduces a person’s life between eight and 10 years.

He affirmed that currently, 13 million Mexicans – out of a total population of 126 million – are diagnosed with diabetes, however, an equal number could be diabetic without knowing it and, therefore, without treating the disease.

“This will result in that when they are detected, they already have complications, difficult to treat, such as kidney failure or cardiovascular problems,” he said.

And regretted that currently Mexico He lives three pandemics together: diabetes, obesity and COVID-19, “whose sum is catastrophic for Mexico,” he said.

According to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), diabetes is a disease that affects more than 422 million people in the world, of which 62 million are in the Americas region.

Mexico currently ranks sixth worldwide in cases of diabetes with an estimated 13 million people living with this disease.