How are worsening rates of diabetes related to the pandemic? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Rates of diabetes are increasing, recent data indicate, and factors related to the pandemic seem likely to be related. Rita Kalyani, a diabetes expert at Johns Hopkins, describes some of them.

Kalyani: As we see less face to face interaction during the pandemic, less attention to healthy lifestyle behaviors, for good reason in many cases, fear of being outside, fear of going to the gym, all the things that we hear about. But we are going to see maybe a spike in the prevalence of these risk factors because during the pandemic people just weren’t able to follow the same routines as they were pre-pandemic. In some ways we might expect it’s going to take us back a little bit.  :29

The pandemic has also compromised how well clinicians can manage different aspects of diabetes care, which some are calling ‘treatment stagnation.’ For now, Kalyani says those with diabetes must redouble their efforts to keep the condition under control and become as educated as possible about the disease. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.