As COVID-19 cases rose, so did diabetes — no one knows why

Clare Watson in Nature:

A study of more than 38,000 young people has confirmed what researchers had begun to suspect: the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a jump in cases of type 1 diabetes in children and teenagers. At first, researchers thought that the rise was caused by the virus itself — but it turns out that is probably not true. Nevertheless, with the overall cause of type 1 diabetes still a mystery, the findings offer new mechanisms for researchers to explore.

The study, published on 30 June in JAMA Network Open1, pooled data from 17 previous studies and found that the incidence of type 1 diabetes in children and teenagers under 19 years old was about 14% higher during 2020, the first year of the pandemic, than in the previous year. The incidence rose higher still in the second year of the pandemic, up 27% from 2019.

More here.