ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To understand the co-morbidity rate between tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus in the mainland of China. METHODS: Based on the related literature regarding tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus published in China National Knowledge Infrastructure Databases (CNKI), Wangfang Databases and the Chinese Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), PubMed and Medline in the last 13 years. Related information was extracted and the generic inverse variance model was applied to estimate the following parameters including rate of co-morbidity, differences on gender, age, results on sputum smear samples, sources and regions of the samples. Quality of the literature was evaluated through the STROBE statement and sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the impact of the quality. RESULTS: Twenty two papers were included for Meta-analysis, with a total sample of 56 805. The combined prevalence rate of diabetes among patients with tuberculosis was 7.20% (95%CI:6.01%-8.39%). According to results from subgroup analysis, at a = 0.05 level, the comorbidity rates among subgroups as:age 40 and above (12.18%), smear positives (11.40%), samples from the hospitals (9.67%)and from the northern regions (9.13%)were higher than the subgroups as age below 40 (2.33%), with smear negative (4.00%), samples from the community level (6.10%)and from southern region (5.94%). CONCLUSION: The co-morbidity rate of tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus was high in mainland China, and were high among cases: at age 40 or above, with smear positive, from hospitals or from the northern region etc.