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BACKGROUND: The risk of type 2 diabetes on the development of hepatocellular carcinoma remains inconclusive in different hepatitis statuses. METHODS: We prospectively followed a community-based cohort with 5,929 persons in southern Taiwan from January 1997 through December 2004, made up of 4,117 seronegative, 982 anti-hepatitis C virus-positive HCV(+), 696 hepatitis B surface antigen-positive HBsAg(+), and 134 coinfected persons. Before the study, 546 participants had developed diabetes. Hepatocellular carcinoma diagnoses were from the National Cancer Registry. RESULTS: After 50,899 person-years of follow-up, 111 individuals had developed hepatocellular carcinoma. The highest risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, compared with seronegative individuals without diabetes, was in anti-HCV(+) individuals with diabetes incidence rate ratio (IRR), 76.0, then coinfected (IRR, 46.0), anti-HCV(+) without diabetes (IRR, 26.1), HBsAg(+) with diabetes (IRR, 21.4), and seronegative with diabetes (IRR, 7.2; P or =30, HBsAg(+) hazards ratio (HR), 12.6, anti-HCV(+) (HR, 18.8), coinfection (HR, 25.9), and diabetes HR, 2.7; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 1.7-4.3 were independent predictors of hepatocellular carcinoma (P or =30 was significant for HBsAg(+) individuals (HR, 3.3; 95% CI, 1.3-8.1). CONCLUSION: Type 2 diabetes is a strong independent predictor of hepatocellular carcinoma in anti-HCV(+) and seronegative individuals but not in HBsAg(+) individuals.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.