Fifteen-year case-control study on the interrelationship between pulmonary tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus

• Author Details:   
• Surya Kant
• Ankita Mandal ^*
• Raj Kumar
• Hem Lata
• Anit Parihar

Background: This study was conducted to determine the profile and differences in radiological patterns on chest X-rays among diabetic and non-diabetic Drug susceptible (DS) Pulmonary Tuberculosis (PTB) patients.
Materials and Methods: This was a case-control, study conducted from March 2009 to July 2019. The case group included   661 Drug Susceptible PTB (DS-TB) patients with diabetes, and 1318 DS-TB patients without diabetes were enrolled as control groups. Accordingly their radiology and sociodemographic profiles were analyzed.  
Results: The participants in this study, encompassing both control and case groups were aged between 20 to 60 years. The mean age was reported as 45.31 years (± 12 years) for the control group and 47.23 years (± 1 year) for the case group. Only 54.54% and 78.40% of the case and control groups, respectively, had a positive tuberculin skin test. About 47.7% of patients in the case group showed lower and middle zone involvement radiologically; they also developed more cavitation compared with the controls (81.1 % vs. 50.8%) and showed multiple lobe involvement with cavitation more frequently than the control group (29.4% vs. 22.7%, p<.001).
Conclusion: Lower zone involvement and cavitory lung lesions in radiology were relatively more common in the case group than in the control group.

Keywords:  Atypical Pattern, Cavitation, Diabetes mellitus, Pleural effusion, Pulmonary tuberculosis.