Drobnik A, et al. – Researchers here aimed at determining the burden of diabetes among people with tuberculosis, HIV infection, viral hepatitis B and C, and STDs in New York City (NYC). Findings suggested that recognizing associations between diabetes and infectious diseases could assist early diagnosis and management of these conditions. They suggested large health systems consider opportunities for increased collaboration across infectious and chronic disease programs facilitated through data linkages of routinely collected surveillance data.

Methods

• In this study, researchers matched adults with select infectious diseases (tuberculosis, HIV infection, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, chlamydial infection, gonorrhea, and syphilis) reported between 2006 and 2010 with hemoglobin A_1c results reported in the same period.
• They considered persons as diabetic with 2 or more hemoglobin A_1c test results of 6.5% or higher.
• They restricted the analysis to persons who were 18 years or older at the time of first report, either A_1c or infectious disease.

Results

• They restricted the analysis to persons who were 18 years or older at the time of first report, either A_1c or infectious disease.
• In this study, overall age–adjusted diabetes prevalence was 8.1%, and diabetes prevalence was associated with increasing age; among NYC residents, prevalence ranged from 0.6% among 18– to 29–year–olds to 22.4% among those 65 years and older.
• Findings revealed this association in each infectious disease.
• Significantly higher diabetes prevalence was observed among persons with tuberculosis born in Mexico, Jamaica, Honduras, Guyana, Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Haiti compared with those born in the United States after adjusting for age and sex.
• Higher age–adjusted prevalence of diabetes was observed among hepatitis C virus–infected women compared with the NYC population as a whole.