High Prevalence of Diabetes Mellitus Among Patients with Fabry Disease in Taiwan: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of diabetes mellitus in patients with Fabry disease using a nationwide population-based dataset. We hypothesised that patients with Fabry disease would have a higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus compared with the general population. Design A cross-sectional study. Setting Taiwan. Participants We identified a study sample from Taiwan's LHID2010 Database. There were 9408 sampled patients in this study, 2352 study patients with Fabry disease and 7056 propensity-score-matched comparison patients. Primary outcome measures Multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to explore the association between diabetes mellitus and Fabry disease after taking the variables of age, sex, geographic location, monthly income category, urbanisation level of the patient's residence, hyperlipidaemia and hypertension into consideration. Results The results revealed significantly higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus among patients with Fabry disease than among comparison patients (35.8% vs 29.6%, p< 0.001). The difference was observed, irrespective of gender, males 37.0% vs 30.6%, (p< 0.001) and female patients, 34.8% vs 28.7% (p< 0.001). The adjusted OR of diabetes mellitus for patients with Fabry disease was 1.424 (95% CI=1.276∼1.591) when compared with comparison patients. Classified by sex, the adjusted ORs for diabetes were 1.428 (95% CI=1.213∼1.682) for males and 1.424 (95% CI=1.226∼1.655) for females. Additionally, among patients aged < 65 years, the adjusted OR was 1.489 (95% CI=1.277∼1.737), and among patients aged 65 or older, the adjusted OR was 1.361 (95% CI=1.161∼1.596). Conclusions Our findings suggest the importance of screening for diabetes mellitus in patients with Fabry disease. Physicians should be conscious of this association and be prepared to manage both conditions concurrently.