Background. Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) has become the global “epidemic” with an estimated 123 million people currently infected worldwide. As the same time diabetes is also rapidly emerging as a global health care problem that threatens to reach pandemic levels by 2030. Objective. To investigate the magnitude of HCV infection in type II diabetes as compared to controls. Methodology. A case control study design was conducted at Jimma University Specialized Hospital from May to June 2010. A total of 604 study subjects were included in this study. Sociodemographic and risk factor data were collected by questionnaire. From serum sample, HCVAb screening was done by rapid antibody screening test. Liver functioning tests and total cholesterol tests were done by Dr. Lange LP 800 spectrophotometer. Results. The prevalence of HCV in type II diabetes and nondiabetic controls was 9.9% and 3.3%, respectively. In multivariate analysis, HCV seropositives have high risk of developing diabetes as compared with seronegatives (AOR？=？2.997, 95% CI: (1.08, 8.315)). Conclusion. In this study, we found a positive association between past HCV infection and type II diabetes. As we did not perform HCV RNA test, we could not assess the association with HCV viremia. 1. Introduction Hepatitis C virus (HCV), RNA single strand positive sense genome virus, was first recognized as a separate disease entity in 1975 when the majority of transfusion-related hepatitis were found not to be caused by the only two hepatitis viruses recognized at that time that is Hepatitis A virus and Hepatitis B virus. The disease at that time was called “non-A non-B hepatitis. The discovery of hepatitis C genome in 1989 has now led to the realization that this virus is a major health problem worldwide [1–3]. HCV is most efficiently transmitted through transfusion of infected blood, transplantation of infected organs, and sharing injection drug equipments [4]. The majority of persons with newly HCV infection are asymptomatic [2, 4]. Only 20% of them develop symptoms such as fatigue, abdominal pain, poor appetite, or jaundice, usually within 4–12 weeks. Apart from these over 50% of those infected individuals will suffer from chronic hepatitis, which may ultimately lead to severe liver disease, cirrhosis, or even the development of hepato-cellular carcinoma and death [5, 6]. WHO estimated the prevalence of HCV infection to be 2%, representing 123 million people [7]. HCV is the leading cause of liver transplantation in developed countries, and the most common chronic blood borne infection in the USA [8].
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