The hypothesis for this study was that hepatitis virus infection could be associated with diabetes, because of the high frequency of injections. In this study, we aimed to determine the prevalence of hepatitis A, B, C and E viruses in type-1 diabetes mellitus.
Methods: Sixty-three patients with the diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and 63 healthy controls were included in this study. Serological markers of four different types of hepatitis (Anti-HAV IgM, total, anti-HAV, HbsAg, anti-HBs, total anti-HBc, antiHBc IgM, anti-HCV and anti-HEV) were studied in all cases. None of the patients had a history of previous icterus or other signs of hepatitis, had received blood transfusions, or were on hemodialysis.
Results: There was no difference between the patients and controls with respect to hepatitis A, B, C and E virus serology. The rate of seropositivity of patients within a month of the diagnosis was smaller than those of the patients whose diagnosis were older than one month, but the difference was not found to be statistically significant (p > 0.05). Moreover, hepatitis virus infections did not seem to be related to duration of disease, nor age of onset, ketoacidosis, HbA1c, and insulin regimen. All of the sera were negative for anti-HCV in both patients and controls.
Conclusion: Serological evidence of previous HAV, HBV, HCV and HEV infections was not significantly different between type-1 diabetes patients and healthy controls. Hepatitis virus infection was not associated with diabetes in spite of the high frequency of injections.