Nearly half of TB patients are diabetic in Tamil Nadu
Looming co-epidemic of diabetics and TB can have fatal results
Update: 2014-11-07 04:09 GMT
Chennai: Despite a successful national TB programme in India, it is likely that the diabetes epidemic is hampering TB control efforts. Three recently published clinical research studies in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka in about 1,500 patients with TB found a high prevalence of DM: about 25 per cent in Tamil Nadu and about 44 per cent in Kerala and about 32 per cent in Karnataka. Nearly half of all patients with TB in Tamil Nadu have diabetes or pre-diabetes, an international report says.
It warns of a looming co-epidemic of diabetes and tuberculosis that could have catastrophic consequences for health care systems around the world if not quickly addressed.
According to a report released by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) and World Diabetes Foundation the two diseases were already leading causes of death and disability around the world. The rates of combined TB and diabetes were higher and more significant than previously believed.
Diabetes is a non-communicable disease that is rising rapidly in developing countries, where 80 per cent of all cases are projected to occur within the next 20 years, with Asia predicted to be hit particularly hard, the report said. Half of those with diabetes would be unaware they had the disease until they developed a complication and TB is an infectious, airborne bacterial disease that lies dormant in one third of the global population.
IUATLD senior scientific adviser Anthony Harries said in high TB-prevalence countries, diabetes increased the risk of somebody getting tuberculosis by two or three times. “What diabetes does is, through mechanisms we don’t quite understand, it also reduces the body’s immunity. So the immune system goes down and the body then becomes more susceptible to allowing the TB germs that are inside it, to basically multiply and get tuberculosis,” he said.
The report that screened TB patients in India for diabetes mellitus (DM) shows significantly higher rates of diabetes among TB patients than the general population and cautions against a co-epidemic of TB and diabetes.
Diabetes is skyrocketing globally, projected to increase from 38.2 crore cases in 2013 to 59.2 crore cases in 2035. In India, 10.9 crore people between the age of 29 and 79 are projected to be living with diabetes in the year 2035.