The impact of diabetes on tuberculosis treatment outcomes: A systematic review

Multiple studies of tuberculosis treatment have indicated that patients with diabetes mellitus may experience poor outcomes.We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to quantitatively summarize evidence for the impact of diabetes on tuberculosis outcomes.

We searched PubMed, EMBASE and the World Health Organization Regional Indexes from 1 January 1980 to 31 December 2010 and references of relevant articles for reports of observational studies that included people with diabetes treated for tuberculosis. We reviewed the full text of 742 papers and included 33 studies of which 9 reported culture conversion at two to three months, 12 reported the combined outcome of failure and death, 23 reported death, 4 reported death adjusted for age and other potential confounding factors, 5 reported relapse, and 4 reported drug resistant recurrent tuberculosis.