Sickle cell disease prevents diabetes mellitus occurrence: A hospital based cross-sectional study

Sickle cell disease is the commonest inherited hemoglobinopathy. There are few reports point towards decrease incidence of diabetes mellitus in sickle cell disease patients.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in VIMSAR, Burla, Odisha between Nov 2014 to Oct 2016. FBS and 2 hours OGTT reports of adult sickle cell disease patients were compared with the same reports from equal no of adult persons without sickle cell disease (controls) to found out any significant difference in prevalence of diabetes mellitus in sickle cell disease patients versus controls.

A total of 137 adult patients of sickle cell disease out of which males were 94 (68.61%) and females were 43 (31.38%) with an average age of (26.7 ± 10.9) years and an equal number of controls [males 87 (63.8%) and females 50 (36.5%)] with an average age of (47.6 ± 13.6) years were included in the study. We found diabetes mellitus in 2 (1.46%) out of 137 sickle cell disease patients with an average BMI 18.5 kg/m² versus 12 (8.76%) in equal number of controls with an average BMI of 22.6 kg/m².

This study concludes that prevalence of diabetes mellitus in sickle cell disease patients is significantly lower than non-sickle cell disease persons. This may be due to less longevity and low BMI in sickle cell disease patients.