Diabetes increases TB risk, says study

Wed, Jul 16 01:45 AM

A NEW study shows that diabetes increases the risk of tuberculosis (TB) threefold, and the finding makes it important that India, which has the world's highest number of people afflicted with both conditions, carries out a systematic assessment of the link. In a recent issue of PLoS Medicine, an open source academic journal, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, in their paper titled Diabetes Mellitus Increases the Risk of Active Tuberculosis, say diabetes could be contributing as much as 10 per cent of TB cases in India and China.

"Our finding shows that tuberculosis occurs more often among people with diabetes than in those without. Thus, people with diabetes may be important targets to regularly screen for and treat active TB in areas of high TB incidence," said researchers Christie Y. Jeonand Megan B. Murrayin the paper.

According to a World Health Organization report, India accounts for the largest share of 22 per cent of the three million new TB cases in South-East Asia every year. Another report, by the World Economic Forum and Global Health Initiative, says India loses 100 million productive workdays every year due to TB, which according to the government's own estimates, results in an economic cost of $3 billion (Rs 12,840 crore) to the society.

Diabetes, on the other hand, is projected to affect 57 million Indians by 2025, according to a report by industry lobby group Assocham. Clinicians say they have long observed the association between the two diseases, but haven't effectively determined whether diabetes causes TB, or vice versa.

"We have known this for long, but due to limited resources, India has focused on fighting multi-drug resistant TB and other infectious diseases, and not cared to maintain a registry to track the correlation of the two diseases," said V.M Katoch, director of the National Jalma Institute of Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases, an Agra-based institution that comes under the purview of the Indian Council of Medical Research. "This cannot be ignored for a long time," said Katoch.

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