People infected with hepatitis C virus have an increased risk of developing type 2, or "adult-onset" diabetes, a population-based study confirms. This risk is particularly high in younger people who are overweight, researchers from Taiwan have found.
Therefore, screening for and preventing diabetes in persons with HCV infection could be started earlier than the suggested age of 45 or older, which is the recommendation for the general population, especially for patients with are heavier or who have other diabetes risk factors for diabetes, Dr Chong-Shan Wang from National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, and colleagues write in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Among 4,958 people age 40 or older without diabetes, 3,486 tested negative and 812 tested positive for HCV. Another 116 subjects were infected with both HCV and HCV infection, and 544 tested positive for hepatitis B.
A total of 474 people developed diabetes during the 7 years that they were followed. After adjusting the data to account for established diabetes risk factors, the incidence of diabetes was 70 percent higher in persons with HCV infection than in those without HCV infection, Dr Wang and colleagues report.