Confusingly, in 1969, Billboard magazine named "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies — yes, from the comic book - THE #1 song in their Year-End Countdown, confusing GI soldiers who stayed up all night listening to their radios in the jungles of Vietnam to hear the results.
Some 50+ years later, Sugar continues to confuse us.
As I mentioned a while back, the major risk factors for severe Covid-19 are Diabetes, PreDiabetes and Obesity (and I mean severe obesity). By definition, obese pts, esp. morbidly obese pts, have trouble managing their Sugar.
SARS-CoV-2 is the first virus to "feed on sugar".
Pts, who have trouble managing Sugar, are the ones at risk for serious or severe disease, with very few exceptions.
From a disease mechanism or pathogenesis point of view, that's huge.
The implications are also enormous for prevention, triage and treatment.
Below is the URL of the article containing clinical and lab data from 184 Covid-19 pts we took care of from mid-March to early-May.
BTW, there just data extracted from each pt's chart.
We didn't have time, yet, to manipulate them.
We had 184 Covid pts in our cohort. Only 2 were under 30 years old.
So, Age matters too.
One was 28 and obese and prediabetic.
The other was 21 years old, his A1C = 10.8% and his admission blood sugar = 225.
So, both, diabetes alone is a risk factor, but the more things you have, obesity, high A1C or high admission blood glucose, the risk for intubation increases.
It seems that those with undiagnosed diabetes and obesity do worse, especially when over 30 years old.
SMS
Can you clarify if it is simply having diabetes that puts you at higher risk, or having uncontrolled diabetes that creates the increased risk? As the parent of a 20 year old Type 1 diabetic under good control (recent A1c of 6.2), and otherwise healthy, we are trying to assess the risk of sending him back to campus for college in August.
Separately, as a long time resident of your hometown, I want to affirm that there are people here who value, admire and support your work, on Covid and in general (insert plug for donations to the smithcenternj.org)
Hang in there!