A charity that supports diabetes research said on Tuesday that there has been an increase in diabetes diagnoses in children under the age of five in recent years, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic could be a factor.
According to a new report by the Baan Diabetes Fonden (Childhood Diabetes Foundation), 460 children in Sweden will be treated for type 1 diabetes in 2022, up 62% from 283 in 2018.
About a third of the children required intensive care when they fell ill, the Byrne Diabetes Foundation said in a statement.
Type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body doesn’t produce any insulin, while the more common type 2 diabetes is a disease in which the body doesn’t produce enough insulin.
“The declining age at which type 1 diabetes begins is frightening and we need to think about how to address this both in research and in healthcare,” researcher Ake Renmark said in a report published by the charity.
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The group said it was well known that viral diseases often precede type 1 diabetes, and noted that Sweden’s current increase coincided with the coronavirus pandemic.
He also said studies have shown that infants who are infected with COVID-19 are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes if their mother did not have COVID-19 before giving birth.
The risk is lower if the mother has been infected or vaccinated.
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“For some children, COVID-19 likely triggered the formation of initial antibodies,” Lahnmark said in the report.
The report added that the number of type 1 diabetes cases had been increasing even before the pandemic, and that the gradual increase observed in the decades leading up to the pandemic was thought to be linked to other cold viruses.
The report said the link between diabetes and COVID-19 is likely to weaken as more people develop immunity.
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