Endocrine Abstracts

Purpose: To determine the changes of the choroidal thickness (CT) in diabetes mellitus (DM) type 1 patients without clinical diabetic retinopathy (DR).

Methods: We evaulated 50 patients with DM type 1 (50 eyes) and 50 healthy controls (50 eyes) in İzmir Military Hospital from January 2012, through January 2013. DR status was evaluated by indirect fundoscopy and included the study if they have no clinical diabetic retinopathy. Age, gender, duration since diagnosis of diabetes, fasting glycose level and serum glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) were gathered from the patient charts. Right eyes of the each study and control groups were examined with spectral domain optical cohorens tomography (SD-OCT). Average macular thickness, central foveal thickness were calculated in macula map. Choroidal thickness was measured at 7 points for each patient: subfoveal, at 500, 1000, 1500 μm nasal and temporal by using the Nidek SD-OCT software. Age, sex, spherical equivalent (SE), intraocular pressure (IOP) and axial length (AL) were compared among groups by means of analysis of variance (ANOVA). Groups compared with Student t test.

Results: The mean HbA1c was 8.9±0.9% in the diabetic group. Mean duration of the diabetes was 6.1±2.8 years in study group. There were no statistical differences in age, gender, SE, AL, and IOP between groups (P>0.05). Subfoveal CT was 266.3±36.5 μm in study group and 278.9±32.8 μm in control group. It was significantly decreased in diabetic group versus control (P<0.05). Nasal 500, 1000, 1500 μm CT were decreased in study group (P<0.05). Temporal 500, 1000, 1500 μm CT were decreased in diabetic group. There was no differences according to the central macular thickness between groups.

Conclusions: Results of our study suggest that the general decrease of CT in patients with no retinopathy caused by early choroidal vasculopathy of DM. This results may guide the development of protective therapeutic strategies for avoiding the complications of DM in the future.