Have diabetes? Here is how respiratory infections might affect you

The study could shed light on how other infections like flu or pneumonia might affect people with diabetes.

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Understanding how diabetes contributes to respiratory disease severity is essential. (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

A new study has demonstrated that respiratory illnesses might strike those with diabetes more severely. Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have demonstrated how diabetes contributes to mortality from Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV infections). This could shed light on how other infections like flu or pneumonia might affect people with diabetes.

They investigated the connection between diabetes and MERS-CoV in a mouse model and discovered that although the virus did not replicate more readily in the diabetic mice compared to the healthy controls, the diabetic mice exhibited a delayed and prolonged inflammatory response in the lung.

According to researchers, this indicates that the increased severity of MERS-CoV infection in patients with diabetes was likely due to a malfunction in the body’s response to infection.

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“Understanding how diabetes contributes to disease severity following MERS-CoV infection in this context is critical,” said Dr Matthew Frieman, associate professor of microbiology and immunology who is the corresponding author of the study.

“Our next step is to determine what drives the altered immune response in diabetics and how to reverse those effects with therapeutics for the treatment of patients,” he added.

Follow-up research could also explore whether health care providers should double their efforts to manage and stabilise glucose levels in patients with diabetes experiencing a dangerous respiratory infection and whether better management would help mitigate the effects of these infections.

“This is an important finding for patients with diabetes and physicians who treat them,” said UMSOM Dean Dr E Albert Reece, who is also the executive vice president for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland and the John Z and Akiko K Bowers Distinguished Professor.

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“We have long known that diabetic patients have worse outcomes when they get a serious infectious disease, but this new insight on immune function could pave the way for better treatments,” Reece said.

The study was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health and was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insights.

First uploaded on: 22-10-2019 at 14:50 IST