Wave in Pediatric Type 1 Diabetes Incidence After the Emergence of COVID-19: Peak and Trough Patterns in German Youth—A Population-Based Study From the Prospective Multicenter DPV Registry
Clemens Kamrath, Alexander J. Eckert, Sarah Lignitz, Nikolas Hillenbrand, Axel Dost, Katharina Warncke, Daniela Klose, Karina Grohmann‐Held, Reinhard W. Holl, Joachim Rosenbauer
Abstract
The incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic (1,2).However, it is not known whether this increase is a persistent phenomenon, which would have significant implications for future patient care.The aim of this study was to investigate the long-term incidence of childhood T1D in Germany during the 9 years before and 4 years after the emergence of COVID-19.We used data from the German Diabetes Prospective Follow-up (DPV) registry of children aged 6 months to 17 years newly diagnosed with T1D from 2011 to 2023.The coverage of the DPV registry for pediatric patients with incident T1D has been estimated at 93% (range 91-96%) for the period 2011-2020 (3).The analysis of anonymized data was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Ulm (314/2021; Ulm, Germany).For the estimation of the year-specific crude incidence of diabetes (per 100,000