Study of Pulmonary Function Test in Type 2 Diabetics and COPD with Diabetes

Abstract

Introduction: The association of reduced lung functions and diabetes mellitus has been described for many years suggesting that the lung could be a target organ in diabetes mellitus. Chronic obstructive Pulmonary Disease is considered as a disease that goes beyond lung involvement giving it an expression of multisystem inflammatory disease. Diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in diabetics may have difficulties due to superimposition of restrictive abnormality associated with diabetes mellitus. Aim: To study pulmonary function test in type 2 Diabetics and in COPD with type 2 Diabetes. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted in Department of Pulmonary Medicine at Dr. Shankar rao Chavan Govt Medical College, Nanded. After inclusion criteria were met, patients were divided into 3 groups (40 type 2 diabetes with COPD (Group A), 40 type 2 diabetics (Group B), and 40 healthy controls (Group C) who are nonsmoker and having no history of any acute or chronic respiratory illness.) which underwent clinical evaluation and spirometry was performed. Results: The spirometric parameters shows that among 40 patients of DM with COPD 22 (55%) had restrictive, 12 (30%) had obstructive,06 (15%) had mixed and 0 patients were normal and among 40 patients of DM 26 (65%) had restrictive,06 (15%) had obstructive,06 (15%) had mixed and 02 (05%) patients were normal spirometric findings. We also compared duration of diabetes with spirometric findings (FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC) in both the groups so we found no correlation between them (p>0.05). Conclusion: The finding in our study proved that patients with type 2 DM with COPD showed additional restriction pattern on spirometry with compared usual obstructive pattern, also further we found that in patients with Type 2 DM we also found restrictive pattern. So we can conclude that DM being a systemic disease, also affects lung causing restrictive type of ventilatory changes. The restrictive changes probably because of glycosylation of connective tissues reduced pulmonary elastic recoil and inflammatory changes in lungs.