22 research outputs found
Association of HCV with diabetes mellitus: an Egyptian case-control study
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The highest Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) prevalence in the world occurs in Egypt. Several studies from different parts of the world have found that 13% to 33% of patients with chronic HCV have associated diabetes, mostly type II Diabetes Mellitus (DM). In Egypt the prevalence of DM is 25.4% among HCV patients. Therefore, it is important to identify the magnitude of the problem of diabetes in order to optimize the treatment of chronic hepatitis C.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The objective of this case-control study was to evaluate the prevalence of DM and other extrahepatic (EH) manifestations among patients with different HCV morbidity stages including asymptomatic, chronic hepatic and cirrhotic patients. In this study, 289 HCV patients older than 18 were selected as cases. Also, 289 healthy controls were included. Laboratory investigations including Liver Function tests (LFT) and blood glucose level were done. Also serological assays including cryoglobulin profile, rheumatoid factor, antinuclear antibody, HCV-PCR were performed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Out of 289 HCV cases, 40 (13.84%) were diabetic. Out of 289 healthy controls, 12 (4.15%) were diabetic. It was found that the diabetic HCV group mean age was [48.1 (± 9.2)]. Males and urbanians represented 72.5% and 85% respectively. Lower level of education was manifested in 52.5% and 87.5% were married. In the nondiabetic HCV group mean age was [40.7 (± 10.4)]. Males and urbanians represented 71.5% and 655% respectively. secondary and higher level of education was attained in 55.4% and 76.7% were married. Comparing between the diabetic HCV group and the non diabetic HCV group, age, residence and alcohol drinking were the only significant factors affecting the incidence of diabetes between the two groups. There was no significant difference regarding sonar findings although cirrhosis was more prevalent among diabetic HCV cases and the fibrosis score was higher in diabetic HCV patients than among the non diabetic HCV cases.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The diabetic patients in the HCV group were older, more likely to have a history of alcohol drinking than the non diabetic HCV cases. Age and alcohol drinking are factors that could potentially contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes. Logistic regression analyses showed that age and residence in urban regions were the predictive variables that could be associated with the presence of diabetes. Alcohol consumption was not a significant predictive factor.</p
Recommended from our members
An epistatic interaction between pre-natal smoke exposure and socioeconomic status has a significant impact on bronchodilator drug response in African American youth with asthma.
BackgroundAsthma is one of the leading chronic illnesses among children in the United States. Asthma prevalence is higher among African Americans (11.2%) compared to European Americans (7.7%). Bronchodilator medications are part of the first-line therapy, and the rescue medication, for acute asthma symptoms. Bronchodilator drug response (BDR) varies substantially among different racial/ethnic groups. Asthma prevalence in African Americans is only 3.5% higher than that of European Americans, however, asthma mortality among African Americans is four times that of European Americans; variation in BDR may play an important role in explaining this health disparity. To improve our understanding of disparate health outcomes in complex phenotypes such as BDR, it is important to consider interactions between environmental and biological variables.ResultsWe evaluated the impact of pairwise and three-variable interactions between environmental, social, and biological variables on BDR in 233 African American youth with asthma using Visualization of Statistical Epistasis Networks (ViSEN). ViSEN is a non-parametric entropy-based approach able to quantify interaction effects using an information-theory metric known as Information Gain (IG). We performed analyses in the full dataset and in sex-stratified subsets. Our analyses identified several interaction models significantly, and suggestively, associated with BDR. The strongest interaction significantly associated with BDR was a pairwise interaction between pre-natal smoke exposure and socioeconomic status (full dataset IG: 2.78%, p = 0.001; female IG: 7.27%, p = 0.004)). Sex-stratified analyses yielded divergent results for females and males, indicating the presence of sex-specific effects.ConclusionsOur study identified novel interaction effects significantly, and suggestively, associated with BDR in African American children with asthma. Notably, we found that all of the interactions identified by ViSEN were "pure" interaction effects, in that they were not the result of strong main effects on BDR, highlighting the complexity of the network of biological and environmental factors impacting this phenotype. Several associations uncovered by ViSEN would not have been detected using regression-based methods, thus emphasizing the importance of employing statistical methods optimized to detect both additive and non-additive interaction effects when studying complex phenotypes such as BDR. The information gained in this study increases our understanding and appreciation of the complex nature of the interactions between environmental and health-related factors that influence BDR and will be invaluable to biomedical researchers designing future studies