COVID-19: Diabetics, take extra care

AAJ KI DELHI / INDIAN NEWS ONLINE

Diabetes increases vulnerability to COVID-19, and the risk is higher among the elderly.  Due to COVID-19, we are observing more deaths among older people and among those with other underlying diseases, or co-morbidities, such as diabetes, hypertension, heart and kidney diseases. It’s the lack of immunity in people with co-morbidities that is the main cause for the higher death rates among them.

Immunity is the body’s ability to resist the entry of diseases caused by bacteria or viruses or to counteract and neutralise disease-causing pathogens that enter the body. The immune system has the ability to identify the nature of the invading pathogen and decide on what type of fighting cells to deploy to fight the invading organism or virus.  

Immune cells are located in various organs of the human body and are capable of engulfing the invading organisms. There are two types of immunity: one is innate or natural immunity; the other is acquired immunity (apart from herd immunity). Whenever there is an invasion by a bacteria or virus, both innate and acquired immune systems interact with each other and bind to the fighting cells to drive away the invaders. This process is called immune response. Successful immune defence requires activation, regulation and resolution of the immune response.

As one’s age advances, biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes and their death in a programmed way. This is called Apoptosis. It is a continuous process and leads to immune deficiency due to a lack of fighter cells in older people, which makes them more susceptible to invading viruses like COVID-19. This is the reason why so many older people afflicted by COVID-19 have lost lives around the world.

Diabetes turns out to be an immune deficiency condition if the blood glucose levels are not kept under control for many years. Such a ‘hyperglycemic’ state impairs overall immunity through different mechanisms.

There are two main reasons why diabetics and older people are more vulnerable to COVID-19: One, dysfunction of the immune system caused by the constant hyperglycaemia makes diabetics more susceptible to COVID-19 and further fails to control the spread of invading pathogens to various organs of the human body; two, poorly controlled long-standing diabetes damages blood vessels in the human body and thus the circulatory system. Blood has a healing effect, provided it reaches the site of infection, but damaged blood vessels prevent that.