Researchers from Denmark say they have "strong evidence" that diabetes is associated with a 25 percent to 75 percent increase in the relative risk of hospitalisation due to pneumonia.
Writing in the journal Diabetes Care, the researchers say these results "emphasise the value of influenza and pneumococcal immunisation, particularly for patients with longer diabetes duration, and the importance of improved glycemic control to prevent pneumonia-related hospitalisation among diabetic patients."
Using health care databases for northern Denmark, Dr Jette B. Kornum from Aarhus University Hospital, Aalborg and colleagues identified 34,239 individuals with a pneumonia-related hospital admission and 342,390 individuals from the general population who served as a control group.
The analysis of these data revealed that individuals with diabetes had a 26 percent higher risk of pneumonia-related hospitalisation compared with those without diabetes.
The risk of pneumonia-related hospitalisation was increased by 4.4-fold in subjects with type 1 diabetes and by 1.2-fold in those with type 2 diabetes. The longer duration of diabetes with poor glycemic control, the higher the risk of hospitalisation for pneumonia became, Kornum and colleagues observed.
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