Patients with diabetes are at an increased risk of blood infections caused by a microbe called enterobacteria. Frequently, these infections start in the urinary tract before spreading to the blood. Diabetic persons with signs and symptoms of urinary tract infection or (blood infections) should be told to seek medical care promptly and physicians should keep a high level of suspicion for these infections if the patient has diabetes. Researchers from the Aarhus University Hospital in Aalborg, Denmark, examined diabetes as a risk factor for enterobacterial blood infections in a study involving 1317 patients with blood infections and 13,170 comparison subjects without infection. Patients with diabetes were three times as likely to develop enterobacterial blood infections as were patients without diabetes. Diabetics under 65 years of age and those who were female were at the highest risk. They also found that these infections were more deadly in diabetics than non-diabetics. For example, after 30 days of infection, 17 percent of diabetics had died compared with 13 percent of non-diabetics. Diabetes has a considerable public health impact on the risk for and prognosis of enterobacteria (blood infections) acquired in the community. Preventive measures for diabetic patients might include increased surveillance and avoidance of well-known risk factors for urinary tract infections. In addition to the treatments that would be applied to any patient with enterobacteria blood infections, control of blood sugar is very important for diabetic patients.
Clinical Infectious Diseases ,
February 2005