For the purpose of the study, researchers from St. Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto used administrative health databases for the province of Ontario from 1994 to 2006 and population based matched retrospective cohort study was conducted on 2,497,777 adults aged 30 to 75 years.
The exposed group comprised 438,069 adults with newly diagnosed diabetes.
The unexposed comparison group, those without known diabetes, consisted of 2,059,708 individuals. Each diabetic individual (exposed group) was matched to five randomly selected individuals without a diagnosis of diabetes (from unexposed comparison group) by year of birth, sex and local health region.
Persons with preexisting liver or alcohol-related disease were excluded. The main study endpoint was incident serious liver disease, defined as cirrhosis, liver failure and its complications, or receipt of a liver transplant.
In the study, the incidence rate of serious liver disease was found to be 8.19 per 10,000 person - years among those with newly diagnosed diabetes and 4.17 per 10,000 person-years among those without diabetes.
The researchers also noted that persons with diabetes and concomitant obesity or hypertension had the highest risk of liver disease. "We posit that the presence of overt diabetes reflects more severe insulin resistance, a greater fatty load in the liver, and potentially worse hepatic inflammation and injury," wrote study authors Joel Ray and Gillian Booth of St Michael's Hospital. "Those who have diabetes may not just have higher blood sugars, but greater long-term insulin resistance and fatty load to the liver, which ultimately impacts on the integrity of the liver's cells."
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