SARS-CoV-2 — No Increased Islet Autoimmunity or Type 1 Diabetes in Teens
Jeffrey P. Krischer, Åke Lernmark, William Hagopian, Marian Rewers, Richard McIndoe, Jorma Toppari, Anette‐Gabriele Ziegler, Beena Akolkar
Abstract
Type 1 Diabetes in TeensTo the Editor: An increased incidence of pediatric type 1 diabetes during the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has been widely reported. 1-4We conducted a study involving 4586 children 9 to 15 years of age from the United States, Sweden, Finland, and Germany. 5The children were followed from January 2020 (prepandemic) through December 2021 (pandemic) and were tested every 3 months for type 1 diabetes if they had islet autoantibodies (440 participants) and every 6 months if they did not (4146 participants) (Table 1).The children were tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) nucleocapsid (infection) and spike (vaccination) antibodies at each follow-up visit.Of the 4586 children, 705 (15.4%) had a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibodies -623 of the 4146 children without islet autoantibodies (15.0%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 13.9 to 16.1) and 82 of the 440 children with islet autoantibodies (18.6%; 95% CI, 15.0 to 22.3).Among the 4146 children without islet autoantibodies, seroconversion to persistent, confirmed positivity for islet autoantibodies occurred in 40 (1.0%; 95% CI, 0.7 to 1.3).Only 5 of these 40 children had nucleocapsid antibodies, which appeared after seroconversion.The remaining 35