Long COVID includes a wide range of respiratory, neurologic, cardiovascular, and other conditions that can last for weeks or even years following SARS-CoV-2 infection.

A study by Gaetano Santulli, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues found that type 2 diabetes should be considered an important long-COVID consequence. The researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 200,000 adults seen by primary care physicians in the Naples, Italy area and compared the rate of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes (T2D) for the three pre-COVID years 2017-2019 with the three “COVID years” 2020-2022. The pre-COVID incidence rate of T2D was 4.85 per 1,000 person-years vs. 12.21 per 1,000 person-years during the COVID years—a 2.5-fold increase in the T2D incidence rate that the researchers called “alarming and progressive.” To detect COVID-related cases of T2D, they recommend that physicians closely monitor the blood-glucose levels of patients who’ve had COVID-19, especially if those patients were already prediabetic. The study has been published online on December 4 in eClinicalMedicine.

Dr. Santulli is an associate professor of medicine and of molecular pharmacology at Einstein.