Systematic review and meta-analysis reveals a 20% prevalence of diabetes mellitus in tuberculosis patients, indicating the urgent need for bidirectional screening and integrated care.
Key Points
To estimate the pooled prevalence of diabetes mellitus among tuberculosis patients in India and identify key demographic and clinical predictors.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of 22 studies comprising 67,155 individuals identified from PubMed, EMBASE, and Scopus up to May 2025.
Study quality was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and NIH assessment tools, with pooled prevalence and adjusted odds ratios calculated via random-effects models.
The pooled prevalence of diabetes mellitus in tuberculosis patients was 20% (95% CI: 15%–27%), increasing to 30% (95% CI: 17%–45%) in pulmonary tuberculosis cases, with high heterogeneity (I² = 99.44%, p < 0.001).
Advancing age over 40 years was a significant predictor of diabetes mellitus (pooled AOR = 5.09, 95% CI: 2.97–8.72, p < 0.001).
Pulmonary tuberculosis diagnosis was significantly associated with diabetes mellitus comorbidity (pooled AOR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.36–2.49, p < 0.001).