Frequency of Diabetes Mellitus in Hepatitis C Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: The burden of both diabetes mellitus (DM) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are widespread problems around the globe. The one chronic disease the later communicable disease is associated as far mortality is concern. People with hepatitis C infection are prone to develop type 2 diabetes. Objective: The study's main objective is to estimate the frequency of people with Hepatitis C who also have diabetes mellitus. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Settings: This study was conducted at Department of Medicine Shaikh Zayed Hospital, Lahore Pakistan. Duration: February 2022 to July 2022. Methods: Total sample of participants would be determined by using Raosoftware. The sample size was selected to be n=100 after taking prevalence of 58.3%, 9% margin of error and confidence level at 95 %. SPSS version 20 was used for the statistical analysis. Results: The average age of the 100 enrolled individuals who tested positive for hepatitis C RNA was 48.46 ± 9.05 years. There were 66 females and 34 men in the sample, making the female to male ratio 1.9:1. N=55 (55% of the total) patients were diagnosed with diabetes but patients diagnosed incidentally on laboratory tests for newly diagnosed cases of diabetes were 29 % (n=29) while remaining were on either dietary restriction or were non-compliant to medications. Most of the patients had HBA1C >7.6 i-e; n=24 (24%) while the others from 6.5-7.0% n= 23 (23%) while the remaining 8 (8%) patients had HBA1C from 7.1-7.5%. Conclusion: Further study is essential to build effective and inexpensive strategies for the monitoring and treatment of diabetes in hepatitis C patients due to the increased frequency of diabetics reported in HCV RNA positive individuals.