Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is the most studied fibrotic lung disease and has overlapping pathogenesis with other fibrotic lung diseases. It is associated with a high prevalence of other comorbidities, such as COPD, lung cancer and coronary artery disease, due to common risk factors such as smoking and older age [1]. Several case–control studies have also suggested a link between IPF and diabetes mellitus. These studies have reported a higher prevalence of diabetes in IPF patients compared to matched controls [2–5]. In a small study, the presence of diabetes was also shown to increase the risk of mortality in IPF patients [6]. Given the limited data due to the small sizes of the prior studies, we sought to explore the prevalence of pulmonary fibrosis (PF) in diabetics compared to nondiabetics in a larger cohort stratified by sex, race and age. In addition, we evaluated differences in the underlying cause of death (UCD) in PF patients with and without diabetes.
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