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by CiteXieAlAlyEtc 1005 days ago
To be sort of nitpicky: the underlying study [0] does not argue a direct causal connection. This is one of many current observational studies reporting on population level trends and measuring associated incidence ratios/risk ratios/hazard ratios.

That said, dismissing the COVID correlation entirely out of hand also feels wrong here; in part because there are meta analysis in the literature [1] that show risk ratios very comparable to increases here.

To compare from the quote in the article:

> Rates of type 2 diabetes were 62% higher (IRR, 1.62) in 2020 to 2021 than in 2016 to 2019. The incidence of type 2 diabetes rose from 14.8 to 24.7 per 100,000 person-years over that time.

To this in Ssentongo et al:

> Of the 8 studies that characterized the risk of incident diabetes among survivors of COVID-19, the pooled point estimates was 1.66 (95% CI 1.38; 2.00, Fig. 2), implying a 66% higher risk of diabetes.

covid-19 is a complex disease that is correlated to problems with almost every major system in the body (See any of the cites implied by my handle), to suggest it's not a factor at all is very likely incorrect.

[0] Mefford et al, "Incidence of Diabetes Among Youth Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic" https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... [1] Ssentongo et al, "Association of COVID-19 with diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24185-7

1 comments

> To be sort of nitpicky: the underlying study [0] does not argue ...

To be sort of nitpicky at the time I made that comment there were only four (IIRC) other comments here all of which were making direct causal connections.

It was less the article I was addressing and more those commenters that felt the need to jump straight into "COVID ate my homework" stories.

I can see that both yourself and I appear to agree that covid-19 is a complex disease with a great many correlations and it certainly factors into to at least some kind of indirect connection.

Of interest, perhaps, is this quote from the link I provided above:

    After adjusting for differences in the age structure of the population, the proportion of people living with type 2 diabetes almost doubled between 2000 and 2013, and has remained relatively stable in the last decade.
There was no covid in the post 2000 decade, something in that time period caused type-2 diabetes to double (rise by 100%) all the same.

I hope you and I both share a similar degree of wariness towards the conclusions of meta-analysis reviews.