Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Diabetic retinopathy was one of the important complications of diabetes both in type 1 or type 2 and cause blindness. High lipid levels was accused of endotheial dysfunction and so play a role in retinal exudate formation in retinopathy. The aim of this study was to acess the association between serum lipid levels and diabetic retinopathy.

Methods: Our study was carried out retrospectively in Istanbul Medeniyet University Goztepe Training and Research Hospital between 2012 and 2013. The cohort composed of 225 type 1 diabetic patients (114 males and 111 females) attending the diabetes outpatient clinic. Mean age was 38.23±11.35 years (range: 17–80). LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, TG, levels, anthropometric parameters, A1c, levels were obained from patients records. Statin user type 1 diabetics are excluded from the study. All of the patients were examined by same ophtalmologist. Patients diveded into two groups: patients without retinopathy and patients with retinopathy including non proliferative or proliferative retinopathy. Data analyzed by SPSS 17.0. Comparisons between different groups were performed by unpaired t-tests. Comparisons across categories were made using x². Correlations between variables of interest were performed by Pearson correlation.

Results: There were no difference according to gender and mean HbA1c levels in two groups (P=0.389 and 0.245 respectively).The mean age of retinopathic patients are significantly higher than non rethinopathic patients (P=0.000). There were no significant difference between normal group and retinopathic group acoordig to LDL and HDL cholesterol levels (P=0.268 and 0.218 respectively). On the other hand there were significant difference between two groups on mean trigliserid levels (P=0.018) group.

Conclusion: LDL and HDL cholesterol levels were not significantly associated with the presence of rethinopathy but trigliserides. Large multi-centric prospective studies are needed about this subject, especially to clarify the reasons of discrepancies between the findings of studies.