Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In patients with β thalassemia major (TM) The interplay between liver siderosis and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection may facilitates the progression to insulin resistance (IR) and diabetes mellitus (DM).

Objectives: Many TM patients are infected with either HCV. Therefore, we aimed to explore if there is any association between DM and HCV-RNA positivity with different genotypes.

Patients and methods: 148 TM patients (age range: 15–53 years; 72 males and 76 females), 78 were HCV-RNA positive. Fifteen patients (10.1%) had type 1 DM. The HCV genotype was done using specific primers in all thalassemic patients with DM as well as in 46 non diabetic TM patients. Serum HCV-RNA was detected using a sensitive polymerase chain reaction assay. We assessed also the frequency of DM in TM patients with HCV+ and HCV-RNA−, and HCV+ and HCV-RNA+.

Results: The commonest genotype in TM patients with and without DM was 1b (Table 1). HCV genotype did not differ statistically between diabetic and non-diabetic thalassemic patients (χ² test). In addition the frequency of DM did not differ among TM patients with HCV+ and HCV-RNA−, and HCV+ and HCV-RNA+. No significant correlation was observed between biochemical parameters (albumin, total protein, liver enzymes or INR) serum ferritin, IGF-I on the one hand and HCV-RNA status on the other hand.

Summary: Our study did not show statistically significant association between DM and HCV-RNA positivity. larger studies are required for acquiring better knowledge about the pathogenic mechanisms that link HCV infection with abnormal glycemic abnormalities.