Prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Egypt; A Retrospective Survey

Background: Non communicable diseases (NCDs) have been a difficult group to define. However, four common behavioral risk factors (tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet, and lack of physical activity) are associated with four disease clusters (cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic pulmonary diseases, and diabetes) that account for about 80% of deaths from non communicable diseases. There is progressive increase in number of patients developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), worldwide. Egypt is present in top ten countries for number of adults with diabetes in the 8th place. We aimed in this work to study the prevalence of non communicable diseases among T2DM patients.

Materials and Methods: This retrospective study involved data of 2468 T2DM patients collected from three Egyptian Governess; Cairo, Giza and Fayoum, for two years duration. These data included patient age, sex, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, education level, duration of DM, degree of diabetes control (assessed by HbA1c), presence or absence of smoking, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, diabetic complications, cardiovascular diseases, chronic lung diseases, chronic liver diseases, thyroid diseases and malignancy.

Results: Of the studied group we found that 797 patients (32.3%) had well controlled DM, 1999 (81%) with BMI ≥ 25, 1333 (54%) were hypertensive, 1876 (76%) had diabetes complications, 31% (765) of patients developed cardiovascular diseases 568 (23%) had chronic pulmonary diseases, 1530 (62%) had chronic liver diseases, 444 patients (18%) had thyroid diseases and 34 cases (1.33%) had malignancy.

Conclusion: There is high prevalence of non communicable diseases in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Egypt, which mandates more organized efforts to face them.