Longer Term Impact Of COVID 19 Infection People With Diabetes

People with diabetes have suffered greater adverse consequences of COVID-19 in the acute phase of infection during the pandemic. Whether they also have increased susceptibility to longer term sequelae is unknown. Such knowledge is critical to public health approaches to management of the pandemic in these populations.

We will build on the excellent available surveillance of the population of people with diabetes in Scotland using the existing SCI-diabetes platform, used already to accurately detail short-term outcomes.

Current research during the COVID crisis has highlighted that to the end of July, 2724 people with diabetes had Covid-19 (positive test, admission or death certificate) of whom 988 had unfortunately died. This means more than 1736 people with diabetes in Scotland may be living with the consequences of Covid-19.

Assessment of the long term holistic impact on people with diabetes cannot be approached using routine data collated from electronic health records and so we propose to use the resources of the Scottish Diabetes Research Network (SDRN) to collect information through questionnaires and clinical examination on a range of outcomes in people with diabetes compared to the general population of people with diabetes.