The impact of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) on hospital admissions and deaths due to common chronic liver diseases (CLDs) is uncertain. Our aim was to investi
gate associations between T2DM and CLDs in a national retrospective cohort study and to investi
gate the role of sex and socio-economic status (SES).
Methods
We used International Classification of Disease codes to identify incident alcoholic liver disease (ALD), autoimmune liver disease, haemochromatosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and viral liver disease from linked diabetes, hospital, cancer and death records for people of 40–89 years of age in Scotland 2004–2013. We used quasi Poisson regression to estimate rate ratios (RR).
Results
There were 6667 and 33624 first mentions of CLD in hospital, cancer and death records over ∼1.8 and 24 million person-years in people with and without T2DM, respectively. The most common liver disease was ALD among people without diabetes and was NAFLD among people with T2DM. Age-adjusted RR for T2DM compared to the non-diabetic population (95% confidence intervals) varied between 1.27 (1.04–1.55) for autoimmune liver disease and 5.36 (4.41–6.51) for NAFLD. RRs were lower for men than women and for more compared to less deprived populations for both ALD and NAFLD.
Conclusions
T2DM is associated with increased risk of hospital admission or death for all common CLDs and the strength of the association varies by type of CLD, sex and SES. Increasing prevalence of T2DM is likely to result in increasing burden of all CLDs.
