Corona vaccination probably protects against another disease

Over the course of the corona pandemic, it has been shown that numerous factors increase the risk of a severe course.

These include, above all, age and certain previous illnesses such as coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic liver disease, cancer or diabetes.

Conversely, a corona infection also makes it more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. So far there has been little research into what role a vaccination against Covid plays. Can it influence the onset of diabetes? A research team from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), the German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf and the company IQVIA in Frankfurt has now investigated this question.

Study: Covid vaccination could protect against serious illness

To do this, the researchers evaluated a database that is based on a representative selection of a total of 970 medical practices from all over Germany and stores anonymized information on illnesses and treatments.

The study included data from 6,198 patients who were vaccinated against Corona for the first time between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022 and who received the first diagnosis of type 2 diabetes six months before or after the vaccination. The researchers then compared the number of first-time diagnoses in the six months before and after the vaccination.

About the study design

As the research team reports, this research method has a decisive advantage over previous studies: the test subjects are compared with themselves. Risk factors such as obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity can therefore be viewed as largely the same in the compared periods.

The surprising result of the study: The number of diabetes diagnoses after the vaccination was lower than in the same period of time before the vaccination. 3,333 diagnoses were made before vaccination, 2,619 after vaccination and 246 on the day of vaccination.

According to this study, a corona vaccination can reduce the risk of diabetes by 21 percent, which corresponds to around a fifth. Other studies from the USA and Hong Kong from 2023 came to comparable results. In one study it was even observed that the higher the number of vaccination doses, the more the risk decreased.

“However, it is unclear what the underlying mechanism looks like,” said the UDE research team in a press release. Further studies are now necessary.

The number of diabetes patients is increasing sharply

According to the German Diabetes Society (DDG), the number of diabetes patients in Germany is around seven million and is constantly increasing. Every year, over half a million people are diagnosed with diabetes. According to experts, twelve million people are expected to be affected by 2040. The World Health Organization (WHO) has described diabetes as an epidemic for years. As with Corona, there are treatment options – but unlike the viral disease, there are no chances of recovery.