Long before COVID-19 devastated us, India has been experiencing the double burden of two debilitating and severe epidemics – type 2 diabetes (a.k.a. diabetes mellitus, DM) and tuberculosis (TB). The figures for both are staggering. Currently, India has around 74.2 million people living with diabetes while TB affects 2.6 million Indians every year. Yet few know how deeply these diseases are interlinked.
The evidence is clear: DM increases the risk of developing respiratory infections. We also know DM is a major risk factor that increases the incidence and severity of TB. Also, DM and TB co-infections adversely affect TB treatment outcomes in a patient. The worry is that among people with TB, the prevalence of DM was found to be 25.3% while 24.5% were pre-diabetic, in a 2012 study in tuberculosis units in Chennai.
