People living with type 2 diabetes are a staggering 60 per cent more likely to develop urinary tract infections (UTIs) than those without the metabolic disease, according to a new observational study.
Researchers in the US, which included staff from global biopharmaceutical firm Bristol-Myers Squibb, compared 135,000 type 2 diabetes patients from the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) with a similar number of non-diabetic controls.
During the follow-up period, they noted that incidence of UTI among patients with diabetes was 46.9 per 1,000 person-years, compared with 29.9 in those without the condition.
Patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes – i.e. those whose diagnosis was made six months or later than GP registration – had a lower UTI incidence (45.5 per 1,000 person years) than those diagnosed at, or shortly after, registration (58.8 per 1,000 person-years).
After adjusting for gender and age, the researchers found that the two-year risk of UTI for all diabetic patients was 61 per cent higher than matched controls.
“Our results confirm that patients with diabetes are at an increased risk of developing UTIs across all age categories,” they concluded.
