Diabetes quadruples hospitalizations for liver disease

Health care providers should be aware that adult patients with diabetes have a sharply increased risk for chronic liver disease and should be counseled accordingly, advised investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a US population-based study reported at the meeting, the investigators found that diabetic adults had four times the rate of hospitalizations related to chronic liver disease, compared with their nondiabetic counterparts. Hepatitis C and “chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis” accounted for most of these hospitalizations in the diabetic group .

“The bottom line is that people with diabetes have associated liver disease, and this is something that providers should be aware of and they should take some sort of preventive measures toward that, [things like] vaccinating against hepatitis B or counseling about decreasing alcohol intake,” lead investigator of the CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis said in an interview.

In fact, the study results provided some of the impetus behind the new recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that calls for hepatitis B vaccination among diabetic adults aged younger than 60 years.

Use the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (a nationally representative survey of hospital discharge data) to assess rates of hospitalization related to chronic liver disease for the years 2001-2008. The sample captured information on roughly 7.5-8.2 million hospital discharges per year.

For each hospitalization, the investigators checked for the presence of diagnostic codes for hepatitis B; hepatitis C; chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis; malignancy of the liver or bile ducts; and alcoholic liver disease. They used National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data to obtain population denominators for adults with and without diabetes.

Study results showed that the age adjusted rate of chronic liver disease-related hospitalization during the entire study period was 1,546 per 100,000 for diabetic adults in the population, roughly fourfold higher than the rate of 398 per 100,000 for non-diabetic adults.

For each of the five diagnostic codes, hospitalization rates in diabetic adults were two to sixfold higher than those in their nondiabetic peers.

Hepatitis C, as well as chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis, were by far the two most common diagnoses within the diabetic group, each seen in about 40% of the hospitalizations, according to also showed a temporal trend whereby the rate of chronic liver disease-related hospitalization increased by 34% among diabetic adults between 2001 and 2008. There was a 55% increase in the rate for chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis, a 44% increase in the rate for malignancy of the liver and bile ducts, and a 34% increase in the rate for hepatitis C.

The rate of chronic liver disease-related hospitalization was consistently higher for men with diabetes than for women with diabetes. This hospitalization rate also increased by a greater extent during the study period among men with diabetes (by 46%; P = .001) than among women with diabetes (by 24%; P = .058).