Can a COVID-19 infection have long-term health effects on people with diabetes, including advancing their risk for heart disease?<\/p>\n
College of Medicine researcher Dinender Singla believes that the genetic makeup of patients with diabetes or those predisposed to the disease makes them more prone to post-COVID inflammatory conditions that impact the heart and brain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that COVID-19 can alter a person\u2019s genetic makeup which can enhance the proliferation of disease and cause further deterioration in diabetes and associated heart disease,\u201d says Singla, who is the AdventHealth Chair of Cardiovascular Science at the College of Medicine.<\/p>\n
Singla has spent much of his research career studying heart failure, diabetes and inflammation. In a recent\u00a0article\u00a0published in the\u00a0American Journal of Physiology<\/em>\u2013Heart<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Circulatory Physiology,\u00a0<\/em>he examined the mechanisms and possible effects of COVID-19 on patients with high-risk diabetes and the virus\u2019 potential to advance the disease, leading to inflammation and heart failure.<\/p>\n \u201cOur thinking is COVID-19 could have three major long-term effects on patients, Singla noys. \u201cOne is cognitive dysfunction, which can lead to Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Second, it can enhance diabetes in pre-diabetic patients or pre-diabetic conditions. Third, it can exacerbate complications of diabetes such as cardiomyopathy or muscle dysfunction.\u201d<\/p>\n Singla theorizes that some diabetic patients who were infected with COVID-19 may have developed a different cellular composition in their blood compared to diabetic patients who never had COVID. The next step in his research is to analyze specific cellular differences in diabetics with and without a COVID infection.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to look into whether there is a difference in blood composition or variations in cytokines \u2014 proteins that affect communications between cells \u2014 compared to the non-COVID diabetic patients,\u201d Singla says. \u201cIf any differences are noted, then we would need to examine what kind of diseases they could potentially cause or enhance in those patients.\u201d<\/p>\n COVID-19 has affected more than 600 million people worldwide, and because vaccines have made the virus not as alarming today as it was two years ago, Singla says there are still many unanswered questions about COVID\u2019s long-term impact on health.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, if someone was genetically predisposed to developing heart disease or Alzheimer\u2019s disease, if that person is affected by COVID-19, will that person develop heart disease or Alzheimer\u2019s earlier than they were predisposed to?\u201d Singla says. \u201cAlso how severe will their disease be and will it be different in people who contracted or did not have COVID-19?\u201d<\/p>\n Singla said he is currently working on securing funding to explore the unanswered questions left in the wake of the virus.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to know will diabetes be present in patients infected with COVID-19 10 or 20 years from now?\u201d Singla says. \u201cWill they develop a special type of cardiomyopathy or diabetic muscle pain and will those diseases be much more in enhanced? Having this information will allow us to be one step ahead in developing therapeutics and treatments to manage any variations of diseases that may occur.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dinender\u00a0Singla theorizes that some diabetic patients who were infected with COVID-19 may have developed a different cellular composition in their blood compared to diabetic patients who never had the virus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":132561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[979,22543,14916],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-132560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-research","tag-college-of-medicine","tag-healthcare","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"\n