Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with tuberculosis and diabetes in European countries. A TB-net study

Introduction: The growing burden of diabetes mellitus (DM) is posing a threat to global TB control. DM triples the risk of developing TB and worsens its clinical course. Aims and objectives: To describe the epidemiology and clinical presentation of patients with TB and DM, and specifically to determine the prevalence of DM among TB patients, to analyze epidemiological and demographic variables associated with DM and to describe the clinical presentation of TB-DM and DM diagnosis among TB patients. Methods: We performed a retrospective study of consecutively diagnosed TB patients aged >18 registered from 2009 to 2013 collected in 6 TB referral centres. Results: This first analysis was performed on 1996 TB patients from Italy, Greece and Spain. 66.1% were male, 1058 (53.0%) foreign-born, 136 (6,8%) had DM (of these, 89 were previous DM diagnoses). DM prevalence was 9.8% (11/112) among those born in countries with DM prevalence ≥8%, 5.1 (48/946) among patients from countries with DM prevalence 100/100,000, compared to being born in a country with a TB incidence Conclusions: Diabetes rapresents a challenge for TB control in Europe especially for older patients. Specific screening strategies should be evaluated.