Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis and Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

Abstract Background: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic diffuse interstitial lung disease, of which the etiology has been poorly understood. Several studies have focused on the relationship between IPF and diabetes mellitus (DM) in the past years but have failed to reach a consensus. This meta-analysis aimed to examine the association between diabetes to IPF.Methods: We accumulated studies investigating the association between DM and IPF from databases including Medline, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. RevMan 5.3 and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) were utilized to analyze the data and assess the quality of the included studies. The value of odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was used as the measure to estimate the risk of DM in IPF. Heterogeneity was assessed by I2 statistics. We also performed subgroup analysis, meta-regression, and Egger’s test for bias analysis. Results: Nine case-control studies with 5,096 IPF patients and 19,095 control subjects were included in the present meta-analysis, which indicated that DM could increase the risk of IPF (OR: 1.65, 95% CI: 1.30-2.10; P < 0.0001). Meta-regression and subgroup analysis negated the influence of covariates like cigarette smoking, age and gender, but the heterogeneity existed and could not be fully explained. Conclusion: The meta-analysis indicated that DM is highly probably related to IPF. Further rigorously designed studies are required to confirm the present findings and investigate the possible mechanisms behind the effect of DM on IPF.