Low prevalence of hepatitis-C viral seropositivity among patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus in a tertiary hospital.

Recently, there have been increasing reports of high prevalence of hepatitis-C virus (HCV) in patients with type-2 diabetes, mostly in western nations. This suggests that type-2 diabetic patients could be considered to be at special risk of acquiring HCV and possibly that diabetes has an etiological relationship with HCV. Ninety patients with type-2 diabetes attending the medical outpatient clinic of the University College Hospital (UCH) and 90 nondiabetic controls with comparable age, sex and risk factors of exposure to HCV were recruited into the study. All subjects were screened for anti-HCV using a third-generation rapid enzyme immunoassay (Dialab anti-HCV cassette). Data were analyzed using Student's t test, Chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test. None of the diabetic patients tested positive for anti-HCV, while 1.1% of the control group tested positive for anti-HCV. There appears to be low prevalence of anti-HCV among type-2 diabetic patients in UCH Ibadan, and therefore no demonstrable risk of HCV in our patients.