Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is the most common pediatric endocrine disorder. Morbidity and mortality stem from acute metabolic derangement and from long term complications that affect small and large vessels and infections. Sometime special type of infection can be the first presenting symptom of DM. Association of DM and infection can act as a vicious cycle. Infection cause uncontroled DM and resulted in uncontroled infection. With awareness of these problems and according to some references that "local and systemic infections are not more common in diabetic children" we decide to have a study about diabetic children.
Materials and Methods: The study done from Feb 1998 to Feb 2003 on 90 cases that admitted with diabetes mellitus. The patients were between 3 y- 18 y old with mean of 10.2 yr. Duration ofDM was between 0-94 no and mean of33.5 moo Results: Out of 90 cases, 40 patients have at least one form of infection and 25 cases (62.5%) female and 15 cases (37.5%) male. The most rate of infection was in 7- 9 yr old. Fungal. infections were the most common type of infection. The most common infection was vulvovaginitis (17 cases) that 6 of them came with cc of vaginitis resulted in diagnosis of DM. UTI was the second infection and sinusitis was the third.
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, infections are more common and serious in diabetic children than healthy children and fungal infections were the most common type.