COVID-19 and Diabetes Mellitus: A Life Threatening Reciprocal Association

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 storm has taken the world and is now posing a massive burden on the healthcare services of the world. Another long-standing global epidemic is diabetes mellitus and diabetics who get infected with COVID-19 have been seen to have worse outcomes and a high non-survival rate. The global focus is to control the pandemic for which diabetes has been proved to be a vulnerable group. The aim of the present review was to assemble the information about diabetes mellitus and COVID-19 mainly focusing on the interrelation of pandemics of the past and diabetes mellitus, possible pathophysiological mechanisms governing COVID-19 in diabetics, the effect of COVID-19 infection on underlying diabetes mellitus, morbidity, and mortality in diabetic COVID-19 patients, and finally the management of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) in the current pandemic. It was concluded that this COVID-19 pandemic is still lurking and it is of great importance to highlight the fact that a high percentage of the population of the world is affected by various comorbidities like diabetes mellitus, hypertension, COPD, obesity, etc., which makes a subset of the population more vulnerable. This vulnerable population is at increased risk for a poor outcome if affected by COVID-19. Hence, we as a society should prioritize this population at risk to avoid adding additional burden to the already overburdened health care system in the present COVID-19 scenario.