Children with COVID-19 are significantly more likely to develop diabetes than uninfected children or those with other respiratory infections, a US study suggests.

The study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to a growing body of evidence that COVID-19 could precipitate diabetes in both children and adults, says endocrinologist Professor Jonathan Shaw, deputy director at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne.

The US researchers looked at ICD coding data for more than 2.5 million children in two US health insurance databases.

“Persons aged under 18 with COVID-19 were more likely to receive a new diabetes diagnosis more than 30 days after the infection than were those without COVID-19 and those with pre-pandemic acute respiratory infections,” the authors wrote.