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Hepatitis vaccine can help prevent diabetes
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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A group of researchers at a medical center in California came to a rather unexpected conclusion. As scientists found out, vaccination against viral hepatitis B can reduce the risk of developing diabetes by half.
Experts analyzed information on more than seven thousand volunteers who were healthy and did not have diabetes at the start of the study. About 1,400 participants were vaccinated against viral hepatitis B. After several years of observation, scientists found that the number of people who developed diabetes in the group vaccinated against hepatitis was slightly more than 1%, while among the volunteers who were not vaccinated, the number of people who developed diabetes was about 6%.
As calculations by experts have shown, vaccination against hepatitis B reduced the likelihood of developing diabetes by 81%.
The human liver takes an active part in glucose and insulin metabolism. According to experts, prevention of infectious diseases, in particular, those that disrupt normal liver functions (which is observed in viral hepatitis), can be of significant importance in the development of diabetes. This assumption will be tested in the course of subsequent studies.
Research groups from the United States often conduct new studies related to viral forms of hepatitis (mainly B and C). In one of the studies by American scientists, it was found that the course of viral hepatitis C differs in men and women. This study is related to a program that has been conducted in the United States in recent years, dedicated to the prevention of viral hepatitis and the detection of infected people among the population.
According to the study, women of reproductive age infected with hepatitis C have a lower probability of developing such a severe complication as liver cirrhosis, compared to men. Scientists assume that this is due to female hormones, which have a hepatoprotective effect. However, after menopause, the risk of developing cirrhosis in women becomes the same as in men.
The protective effect of female sex hormones is also associated with some other phenomena. Thus, experts noted that the prognosis for the spontaneous death of the virus and self-healing in men is always worse than in women. The likelihood of contracting viral hepatitis sexually in men increases in the case of contact with a woman during menstruation (if she is infected with the virus).
In addition, among women who had a cesarean section before 1992, there is an increased risk of contracting chronic hepatitis C. This is due to the fact that during the operation, women often received donor blood transfusions, but donor blood was only tested for viral hepatitis after 1992.
For this reason, there may be millions of women living in different countries around the world who are infected with hepatitis, but do not even suspect it, since the disease may not manifest itself in any way for years (for 20-30 years).
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