Abstract
Objectives: To find risk factors to diabetic retinopathy (DR) in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. Methods: A four years cross sectional study involving 386 patients with T2DM conducted at the diabetes clinic in Al-Hindeya General Hospital, Karbala, Iraq. Interviews were done for the participants focused on sociodemographic factors and included general examination with laboratory screening for fasting blood glucose (FBG), glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), and serum lipids. The participants underwent ophthalmological testing including visual acuity, slit lamp examination, and optical coherence tomography. The patients were divided into retinopathy and non-retinopathy groups involving 109 and 277 patients, respectively. Both groups were screened for risk factors including age, gender, duration of disease, body mass index (BMI), treatment modality, HbA1c, and dyslipidemia. Results: The study included 109 patients (62 females, 47 males) with retinopathy and 277 patients (149 females, 128 males) control. Mean age for retinopathy and control groups were 54.76± 7.63 and 54.15± 9.20 years, respectively. Mean duration of disease for retinopathy and control groups were 12.79± 5.91 and 8.51± 5.16 years, respectively. Longer duration of disease and poor glycemic control showed positive association with DR with a P-value of 0.0001 and 0.033, respectively. Gender, BMI, age, treatment modality, and dyslipidemia showed negative association with DR. Conclusions: In our study DR significantly associated with longer duration of disease and poor glycemic control while the relation was insignificant for gender, BMI, age, treatment modality, and dyslipidemia. Keywords: Type 2 diabetes mellitus, Diabetic retinopathy, glycated hemoglobin, risk factor for retinopathy. DOI : 10.7176/JHMN/70-08 Publication date: January 31 st 2020
Highlights
type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a worldwide major health problem with multi-systemic involvement
The duration of disease less than ten years in retinopathy group contributed to one quarter (26.6%) in comparison to nearly two thirds in control group (60.6%)
Our study found diabetic retinopathy in type 2 diabetes mellitus significantly associated with longer disease duration and poor glycemic control
Summary
Diabetes is expected to follow the projected increase in the global number of diabetics reaching 629 million by 2045. Such a huge number of patients supposed to associate with a wide range of complications including retinopathy [1]. It is estimated that 50% of the high-risk diabetic population are unaware of the presence of DR due to the subtle and progressive clinical features of early DR. This fact contributed to the increase visual morbidity in diabetic patients [7, 8]
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