Aims: To determine whether hospital admission for a range of specified virus infections was followed by a raised admission rate for diabetes mellitus; and, if raised, whether the increase is compatible with the hypothesis that virus infection is a cause of diabetes.
Methods: Analysis of a database of hospital statistics including admissions for people with diabetes mellitus before the age of 30 years.
Results: There was no evidence of excess risk of diabetes after measles, mumps, rubella, infectious mononucleosis, influenza, infectious hepatitis, varicella and herpes zoster, herpes simplex, aseptic meningitis or bronchiolitis. For example, of 1433 patients admitted for measles, 6 were later admitted with diabetes (risk ratio 1.32; 95% confidence interval 0.5-2.9); of 866 patients admitted for mumps, 2 were later admitted for diabetes (risk ratio 0.74; 0.1-2.7). Numbers of people with diabetes subsequent to infection were too few, however, to rule out the possibility of small effects.
Conclusions: Our findings do not support the hypothesis that any of these virus infections initiate the processes that lead to the development of diabetes, or that these infections act as a trigger to precipitate active disease in those whose diabetes is already present but latent.