Curbing diabetes vital to controlling TB

Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a major global public health challenge with nearly 9 million new cases and 1.5 million deaths due to this disease annually. There are several identified risk factors for TB including HIV, smoking, under nutrition, occupational lung diseases (like silicosis) and several others. One of the fast emerging risk factors for TB, which most people remain unaware of, is Diabetes Mellitus (DM).  Recent research findings confirm that diabetes by itself triples the risk of developing TB and adversely affects disease presentation and treatment outcomes. Prevalence of diabetes is estimated to increase exponentially from 382 million cases in 2013 to 592 million cases by 2035. It is likely that diabetes will soon surpass HIV as the most important risk factor for TB. Most importantly the burden of diabetes is moving from developed to developing countries which unfortunately also carry high burden of TB.