People with diabetes are at three-fold increased risk of developing active tuberculosis (TB), according to an analysis published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine on Monday.

Researchers of the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed data on 1.7 million people from 13 studies on the relationship between diabetes and TB.

The results showed that diabetes increases the risk of active TB by three times regardless of geographic region.

The data also suggested that diabetes may be responsible for more than 10 percent of TB cases in India and China.

If these findings are replicated in other countries, global TB control might benefit from special attention to people with diabetes when identifying and treating latent TB.

The role of diabetes may complicate efforts to drive down rates of TB, which trails only AIDS on the list of the leading killers among infectious diseases, the researchers said.

An estimated one-third of the world's population is infected with the bacterium that causes TB, a disease that typically attacks the lungs and spread from one person to another when someone with the disease coughs or sneezes.

(Xinhua/Agencies July 15, 2008)