Hepatitis C virus infection and post-transplant diabetes mellitus among renal transplant patients: A meta-analysis

Objective: To examine the association between HCV infection and the occurrence of post-transplant diabetes mellitus (PTDM) among renal transplant patients. Design: Meta-analysis of observational studies. Data Sources: We retrieved studies published in any language by systematically searching Medline, and Embase and by manually examining the references of the original articles, reviews, and monographs retrieved. Review Methods: We included cohort and case-control studies reporting relative risk estimates and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for PTDM occurrence with HCV after renal transplantation. Thirteen studies providing information on a total of 30,099 unique patients were included in our meta-analysis. Results: Study-specific relative risks were weighted by the inverse of their variance to obtain fixed-and random-effects pooled estimates. The pooled relative risk (RR) for PTDM after RT was 2.73 with a 95% confidence interval (CI) of 1.94; 3.83 (10 studies). In a stratified analysis including only large studies (2 studies), the pooled RR was 1.36 (95% CI, 1.21; 1.54). Egger's regression test showed some evidence of publication bias (p=0.0001), but our sensitivity analysis showed that this issue did not meaningfully change the results. Conclusions: Our study shows a marked increase of the risk of post-transplant diabetes mellitus in anti-hepatitis C virus-positive renal transplant recipients. The excess risk of death in hepatitis C virus-positive renal transplant recipients may be at least partially attributed to post-transplant diabetes mellitus with its attendant complications.