Health
New research shows higher risk of developing diabetes after COVID-19 infection
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A big new research discovered that individuals who recovered from Covid-19 inside the previous 12 months are 40% extra prone to obtain a brand new prognosis of diabetes in comparison with those that weren’t contaminated.
The elevated danger interprets into 1% of people that have had Covid-19 growing diabetes who in any other case would not have, the research’s writer says, leading to doubtlessly tens of millions of recent instances world-wide.
The general public with diabetes within the research, printed on-line Monday within the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, had been identified with Sort 2 diabetes, not Sort 1. Some researchers say Covid-19 is also triggering a completely new kind of diabetes through which sure cells mistakenly begin to increase, fairly than decrease, blood sugar.
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The research provides to proof exhibiting an elevated post-Covid-19 danger of cardiometabolic situations, similar to diabetes in addition to coronary heart and kidney problems. Usually when individuals consider long-term Covid-19 signs, they consider issues similar to cognitive points, fatigue or shortness of breath. However scientists say there are seemingly several types of lengthy Covid, and one seems to be outlined by cardiometabolic issues that come up after Covid-19. To this point, the World Well being Group estimates there have been greater than 464 million instances of Covid-19, so even small percentages of these individuals growing long-term problems can be important.
“We’re discovering out increasingly that it is not solely respiratory issues or mind fog or solely fatigue,” says Ziyad Al-Aly , chief of analysis and growth on the VA St. Louis Well being Care System and a medical epidemiologist at Washington College in St. Louis, who led the research. “There are coronary heart manifestations, and clearly diabetes and kidney manifestations.”
Dr. Al-Aly’s group has lately printed research on these broader dangers. One confirmed a better danger of growing coronary heart issues, together with stroke and coronary heart assault, in individuals who have had Covid-19 than in individuals who have not. One other confirmed post-Covid-19 sufferers had been extra prone to have declines in kidney perform or kidney injury as a lot as six months after an infection when in comparison with sufferers who hadn’t had Covid-19.
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The researchers discovered solely an affiliation between Covid-19 and cardiometabolic situations, with out proving a trigger. Some medical doctors say that new diagnoses of Sort 2 diabetes and coronary heart situations may very well be influenced by weight acquire or decreased exercise through the pandemic, though life-style adjustments would not essentially clarify a rise particularly in individuals who have had Covid-19.
Within the new diabetes research, Dr. Al-Aly and co-researchers analyzed the information of 181,000 Covid-19 sufferers within the Veterans Well being Administration system who had been identified with Covid-19 inside the previous 12 months and in contrast them to greater than eight million individuals who did not have Covid-19. The VA research did not have a look at diabetes instances by vaccination standing.
“Whenever you have a look at the info on a nationwide scale it is clearly occurring even in individuals who haven’t any danger elements or little or no danger elements,” Dr. Al-Aly stated, including that new diagnoses are occurring even in younger adults with a wholesome weight and no earlier historical past of excessive blood sugar.
Maren Laughlin, a program director on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being Nationwide Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Illnesses, stated the research was very nicely completed. Its most important limitation, she famous, is that VA sufferers usually are typically older and sicker and embrace extra males than the broader inhabitants.
It hasn’t been decided why a Covid-19 an infection could be resulting in new instances of diabetes. One chance is that the virus may injury the pancreas’s capacity to secrete insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar. One other principle is that the sturdy immune response to Covid-19 generates an inflammatory cascade that ends in low-grade irritation, which interferes with insulin secretion and sensitivity.
A person measures his blood sugar.
(iStock)
All forms of diabetes share the symptom of excessive blood sugars, however they’re distinct situations. Sort 2 is the commonest, and may be related to eating regimen and train. Usually in Sort 2, individuals turn into immune to the hormone insulin, which regulates blood sugar. The pancreas struggles to maintain up with the physique’s elevated demand for insulin, resulting in greater blood-sugar ranges.
Sort 1, against this, is an autoimmune illness through which the physique destroys pancreatic cells that produce insulin. Different forms of diabetes embrace gestational diabetes, which may develop in pregnant ladies.
The newest research follows different latest analysis that has discovered an elevated danger of a diabetes prognosis after a Covid-19 an infection, together with a January Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention report taking a look at kids.
In a March research within the journal Diabetologia, German researchers discovered that individuals who had Covid-19 had a roughly 28% elevated danger of a brand new Sort 2 prognosis in comparison with those that had an acute upper-respiratory an infection that wasn’t Covid-19. The researchers in contrast information from greater than 35,000 Covid-19 sufferers to an equal variety of individuals with infections that weren’t Covid-19. They did not discover an elevated danger for different forms of diabetes.
And a February JAMA Community Open research discovered that individuals who examined constructive for Covid-19 had roughly a two instances larger danger of a brand new Sort 2 prognosis one to 5 months after their an infection in comparison with those that examined unfavourable for the virus. About 7% of hospitalized adults with Covid-19 acquired new diabetes diagnoses inside 5 months, in comparison with 3.6% of adults with out Covid-19.
There are a lot of challenges in decoding the info, says Jason Block, an internal-medicine doctor and affiliate professor at Harvard Medical College who’s senior writer of the JAMA research. Many individuals hadn’t been to see a physician for some time through the pandemic, so they could have had diabetes with out figuring out it. As well as, steroids — a generally used treatment for extreme Covid-19 sufferers — can quickly improve blood sugar and may also set off diabetes in sufferers in danger for the situation.
There are a number of attainable organic the explanation why a diabetes prognosis may comply with a Covid-19 an infection. Analysis has indicated that the virus can infect and injury beta cells within the pancreas in order that they produce much less insulin.
In a single research, researchers discovered that once they added the coronavirus to beta cell samples, genetic adjustments occurred within the cells that considerably lowered their capacity to make insulin. As a substitute, to the researchers’ shock, the cells did one thing uncommon: They began making a unique hormone, glucagon, whose perform is to extend blood-glucose ranges.
“The beta cells misplaced their cell id and changed into a unique kind of cell,” says Shuibing Chen, director of the diabetes program at Weill Cornell Medication in Manhattan, who led the research.
Dr. Chen says Covid-19 an infection seems to be triggering a brand new kind of diabetes that is not Sort 1 or Sort 2. Dr. Chen says her crew is finding out remedies particularly for Covid-19 sufferers newly identified with diabetes to see whether or not they can block the method by which the cells may change.
Stanford researchers in an August research printed within the journal Cell Metabolism documented one other attainable clue to post-Covid-19 diabetes. Lab research discovered that the virus selectively focused beta cells within the pancreas.
“It lowered their viability fairly rapidly and lowered their capacity to secrete insulin in lower than a day,” says Peter Jackson, a professor within the microbiology and immunology division at Stanford College College of Medication, and senior writer on the research. “It is a sturdy impact.”
Health
Scientists May Be Able to Make Grapefruits Compatible With Medications They Currently Interfere With
You may be among the millions of people who have seen a surprisingly specific warning like this on the labels of drugs you take:
Avoid eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice while using this medication.
Such warnings are issued for dozens of substances, including docetaxel, a cancer drug; erythromycin, an antibiotic; and some statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to more than a third of American adults over 40.
The problem is a set of molecules, furanocoumarins. High levels of furanocoumarins interfere with human liver enzymes, among other processes. In their presence, medications can build up to unhealthy levels in the body. And grapefruits and some related citrus fruits are full of them.
But there is no such warning for other kinds of citrus, such as mandarins and other oranges. Citrus researchers at the Volcani Center in Israel reported Wednesday in the journal The New Phytologist that, by crossing mandarins and grapefruit, they’ve uncovered genes that produce furanocoumarins in some citrus fruits. It’s a finding that opens the possibility of creating grapefruit that doesn’t require a warning label.
Scientists had worked out the compounds’ structures and pieced together a basic flowchart of how they are made years ago, said Yoram Eyal, a professor at the Volcani Center. But the precise identities of enzymes catalyzing the process — the proteins that snip off a branch here, or add a piece there — remained mysterious. He and his colleagues knew that one way to identify them was to breed citrus high in furanocoumarins with those without. If the offspring of such a cross had varying levels of the substances, it should be possible, by digging into their genetics, to pinpoint the genes for the proteins.
“We were afraid to approach it, because it’s very time-consuming and it takes many years,” he said, noting how involved it can be to grow new trees from seeds and assess their genetics. “But finally, we decided we have to dive in.”
When they examined the offspring of a mandarin and a grapefruit, the researchers saw something remarkable. Fifty percent of the young plants had high levels of furanocourmains, and 50 percent had none. That particular signature meant something very specific, in terms of how the ability to make these substances is inherited.
“We saw there was only one gene that could have controlled it,” said Livnat Goldenberg, a Volcani Center researcher who is the lead author of the new study.
The researchers soon identified the gene controlling the production of furanocoumarins in leaves and fruit, which produces an enzyme called 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase, or 2OGD for short. Mandarins, it turns out, have a mutated form of this gene that keeps the enzyme from functioning properly. This version cropped up in all the mandarin and orange varieties the researchers checked, explaining why they do not cause the same problems as grapefruit in people taking prescription medications. In these plants, furanocoumarin production is paused.
With gene editing technology, it should be possible to alter the gene in grapefruit as well, Dr. Eyal suggests. The team at the Volcani Center is now exploring that project.
Looking at how widespread this mutated version is in mandarins and some other citrus, the scientists speculate that some gene nearby on the genome must play an important role in a highly prized trait. A long-ago citrus breeder, selecting for some unknown quality, must have unwittingly spread this furanocoumarin-busting version of the gene to an ancestor of modern varieties of mandarins and oranges.
All these years later, that person’s work is coming to light, under the gaze of geneticists, who may, someday, put grapefruit back on the menu.
Cases of tularemia, also known as “rabbit fever,” are on the rise in the U.S., according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Caused by the bacteria Francisella tularensis, the disease commonly infects rabbits, hares and rodents. However, it is zoonotic, which means it can spread from animals to humans.
The bacteria is a “tier-1 select agent,” a classification given to agents and toxins that “present the greatest risk of deliberate misuse with significant potential for mass casualties or devastating effects to the economy, critical infrastructure or public confidence, and pose a severe threat to public health and safety,” per the CDC.
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Although tularemia is relatively rare, with only 2,462 diagnoses between 2011 and 2022, cases have risen 56% compared to the prior decade (2001 to 2010), as reported in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Cases of tularemia, also known as “rabbit fever,” are on the rise in the U.S., according to a new report from the CDC. (iStock)
“Increased reporting of probable cases might be associated with an actual increase in human infection, improved tularemia detection or both,” the report states.
Millions of new cases of diabetes and heart disease every year are caused by sugary drinks, according to newly published research.
Tufts University in Boston led the study, which found that about 2.2 million new diagnoses of type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease were attributed to sugar-sweetened sodas and juices each year, according to a press release.
The findings were published in the journal Nature Medicine this week.
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The highest rates were found in Colombia, where 48% of new diabetes cases were linked to sugary drinks, and in Mexico, where nearly a third of cases were attributed to them.
Meanwhile, in Latin America, more than 24% of new diabetes cases were linked to sugary beverages, and 21% in sub-Saharan Africa, the study found.
About 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease occur each year worldwide due to consuming sugar-sweetened soda and juices, according to the findings of a new study. (iStock)
In South Africa, 27.6% of new diabetes cases and 14.6% of cardiovascular disease cases were attributed to sugary drinks.
Sugary drinks are rapidly digested, causing a spike in blood sugar levels with little nutritional value.
Sugary drinks cause blood sugar to spike because they are “rapidly digested,” the research team said.
When consumed on a long-term basis, these types of beverages, in addition to increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, can also lead to weight gain and insulin resistance, the researchers added.
Men are more likely than women to suffer the consequences of sugary drink consumption, as are younger adults compared to their older counterparts, a new study asserts. (iStock)
Professor Dariush Mozaffarian, the study’s senior author, said in a university press release, “Sugar-sweetened beverages are heavily marketed and sold in low- and middle-income nations.”
He added, “Not only are these communities consuming harmful products, but they are also often less well-equipped to deal with the long-term health consequences.”
FRIENDS, FAMILY MAY PROTECT AGAINST HEART ATTACK, STROKE AND TYPE 2 DIABETES, STUDY SUGGESTS
Certain groups are more likely to experience negative health effects from sugary drinks, including men and younger adults, the researchers noted, as news agency SWNS also noted.
New Jersey-based registered dietitian Erin Palinski-Wade, who was not involved in the research, said the findings were to be expected, as diets rich in added sugars are more likely to increase the risk of chronic health conditions, including type 2 diabetes.
When consumed on a long-term basis, these types of beverages can also lead to weight gain and insulin resistance, experts say. (iStock)
“Sugar-sweetened beverages are a major cause of added sugar in the diet and easy to overconsume, as they provide little fullness,” she told Fox News Digital.
“The high calorie content and lack of satisfaction due to little protein, fat or fiber in these drinks can lead to excess calorie consumption, which can lead to weight gain — especially gains in visceral fat (belly fat), which has been found to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes,” she went on.
“Sugar-sweetened beverages are easy to overconsume, as they provide little fullness.”
Palinski-Wade pointed out that there were some limitations to the new research.
“This was an observational study, not a causation study, and shows only an association between diets containing sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes,” she noted.
“It does not prove that those drinks alone trigger an onset of type 2 diabetes.”
What needs to change?
To remedy the issue, the study authors called for a “multi-pronged approach,” including public health campaigns, regulations on advertising and taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, the release stated.
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“We need urgent, evidence-based interventions to curb consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages globally, before even more lives are shortened by their effects on diabetes and heart disease,” first author Laura Lara-Castor, now at the University of Washington, said in the release.
Approximately 65% of adults in the U.S. consume sugar-sweetened beverages daily. (iStock)
Mexico implemented a sugary drinks tax in 2014, which has shown to be effective in reducing consumption, the researchers stated.
“Much more needs to be done, especially in countries in Latin America and Africa, where consumption is high and the health consequences severe,” wrote Mozaffarian.
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“As a species, we need to address sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.”
Many different factors are involved in insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, Palinski-Wade noted.
“As a species, we need to address sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.”
“However, reducing your intake of sugar-sweetened beverages can go a long way toward improving overall blood sugar regulation and future health.”
The new research was supported by the Gates Foundation, the American Heart Association and Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers for further comment.
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