SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - Cox Health officials want people with Type 1 diabetes to be bumped up on the list of who can get a COVID-19 vaccination.
“Failure to differentiate from Type 1 to Type 2 is an error that will cost lives,” said CoxHealth CEO Steve Edwards.
Missourians now eligible for vaccines include people 65 and older, in addition to others with certain medical conditions that make them high-risk. That list includes people with type 2 diabetes, but not type 1.
It’s something Edwards said needs to change.
”If you’re a 64 year-old, brittle diabetic, and you’re type 1, you have no prioritization for the vaccine. You’d be in the same line as a health 20-year-old,” Edwards said. " We want to make sure type 1 and type 2s are in the same line.”
CoxHealth endocrinologist Dr. Linda MacGorman said the decision likely came down to numbers.
”The CDC guidelines are based on data with large numbers. So in any of the studies that are done, the number of patients with type 1 diabetes compared to type 2 diabetes is just going to be a lot lower,” Dr. MacGorman said. “Just the volume of patients to study is lower, that doesn’t mean their risk is lower. "
Over at Mercy, endocrinologist Dr. Johnson Thomas said the number of patients developing diabetes after being infected with COVID-19 is rising.
”Studies have looked into this, and when they pulled about 3,600 patients, they found about 14.4% of the patients who had COVID-19 ended up having new diagnosis of diabetes,” Dr. Thomas said.
The cases Dr. Thomas mentioned were Type 1 diabetics, meaning their body produces little to no insulin. Dr. Thomas said this is not a new phenomenon, and it’s not unusual for viruses to trigger autoimmunity in our body and cause type 1 diabetes.
”But with COVID-19 we are not sure exact mechanism,” Dr. Thomas said.
He said the hospital does not have a change in [diabetes] management because of this, but is being a little bit more cognizant of worsening diabetes or new-onset diabetes. Dr. Thomas says the effects of COVID-19 related diabetes are long lasting, but treatable.
“If you have a loved one who developed diabetes during this, I can say it’s easy to manage just like regular diabetes with of course diet, exercise and medication. We will be able to take care of it like normal diabetes,” Dr. Thomas said.
He said Mercy became aware of this occurring early on in the pandemic. Dr. Thomas has been keeping track of a research database where you can submit patients and see why this is happening. Some risk factors, like obesity and family history can make someone more prone to developing this problem, according to Dr. Thomas.
“The patients who ended up having new-onset Type 1 diabetes, we don’t know. They were not obese patients, but we don’t know about the family history, and that’s the importance of this worldwide registry is to pull in all of the new patients and figure out what are the risk factors,” Dr. Thomas said.
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February 19, 2021 at 07:00AM
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