GALLSTONES AND DIABETES - A CASE-CONTROL STUDY IN A FREE-LIVING POPULATION-SAMPLE

Data on the association between cholelithiasis and diabetes often are controversial and are mostly based on autopsies or on hospital series, Therefore, we designed a case-control study to determine the prevalen ce of diabetes mellitus in a group of subjects with gallstones or havi ng undergone cholecystectomy (cases) and compared these with a control group of subjects without gallstones, selected during an epidemiologi cal study performed on a free-living population sample, The subjects w ere matched for sex, age, and body mass index, We enlisted 336 cases a nd 336 controls, aged 30 to 69 years, All subjects with fasting glycem ic levels of <140 mg/dL and without a documented history of diabetes w ere submitted to a simplified oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). All subjects who underwent OGTT were classified according to the National Diabetes Data Group (NDDG) criteria, The prevalence of diabetes in the subjects affected by gallstone disease was significantly higher than that in controls (11.6% vs. 4.8%; odds ratio [OR], 2.55; 95% confidenc e interval [CI], 1.39-4.67), Diabetes was more frequent in subjects wi th gallstone disease than in the control group, even according to sex (18.3% vs. 9.9% for men: OR, 2.03; 95% CI, 0.99-4.2; 9.3% vs. 2.6% for women: OR, 3.85; 95% CI, 1.4-10.6), We conclude that an altered gluco se metabolism may increase the risk of developing cholelithiasis in ce rtain subjects.