[Prevalence and significance of type-2 diabetes mellitus in chronic liver disease, correlated with hepatitis C virus].

A high prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related chronic liver diseases has been reported in numerous studies. Other studies failed to confirm this observation. We have studied the relative prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in two groups of patients respectively presenting with HCV-related chronic liver disease (224 patients) and chronic liver diseases of other etiologies (30 hepatitis B virus-HBV-related chronic liver disease, 22 alcoholic liver cirrhosis), in order to confront them. Our study revealed a higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the group of patients with HCV-related chronic liver disease in comparison with the group of patients with chronic liver disease of other etiologies (32.5 vs 15.3%; p = 0.03). Patients with HBV-related liver disease had diabetes in 6.6% of cases, and the difference with patients with HCV-related disease was significant (p = 0.007). Our study confirms a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients with HCV-related chronic liver disease. It could be suggested that type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients with HCV-related chronic liver disease could be facilitated by hepatic iron overload and mitochondrial damage.