We've know for awhile that people with various pre-existing conditions are at higher risk of death from coronavirus. In the original report from the Chinese CDC, people with diabetes had a 3x higher case fatality rate than the general population. But people with diabetes tend to be older, so it might just be correlation with age. A recently posted preprint matched diabetic covid-19 patients with controls that were similar in age and other health problems. The result was that the diabetics fared worse. They had roughly double the risk of acute respiratory distress, heart damage, kidney damage, and secondary infection. The mortality of diabetic patients was 35%, compared to 20% for matched controls. Median age was 66.
This makes a lot of sense, because diabetes comes with increased inflammation, including increased IL-6, which appears to be a major driver of severe covid-19 disease.
The prevalence of diabetes is about the same in China and the US, although it's not evenly distributed here.
Stay safe and isolate on!
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/JELJOUR_Results.cfm?form_name=journalBrowse&journal_id=3526432&Network=no&lim=false
