A Pediatric Case of Abrupt-Onset, Autoantibody-Negative Diabetes With Marked Insulin Resistance Concomitant With COVID-19

By December 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had claimed the lives of more than 200,000 in the United States alone, with more than 10.8 million people infected (1). As the numbers grow, we continue to learn that this disease has wide-ranging outcomes of varying severity affecting multiple organs (2). Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the novel virus causing COVID-19, uses the ACE 2 receptor to enter human cells. This receptor is expressed in 15 different human organs (3). Moreover, it is avidly expressed in the pancreatic islets, but not on the exocrine pancreas, suggesting that the virus may directly affect β-cells (3).