Endocrine Abstracts

Background: In the previous study, it was demonstrated that pancreatic steatosis was significantly associated with subclinical atherosclerosis in patients with non-obese T2DM. As the result, it was suggested that pancreatic steatosis might be related to macrovascular complication of T2DM. However, the association of pancreatic steatosis on microvascular complication of T2DM has been unknown.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the relation between pancreatic steatosis and diabetic retinopathy in T2DM subjects.

Method: Attenuations of pancreas and spleen of 168 patients with T2DM were measured by using non-enhance computed tomography (CT) imaging. Then the difference of attenuation between pancreas and spleen (P-S) and attenuation ratio of pancreatic-to-spleen (P/S) values were calculated for evaluation of pancreatic steatosis. Obesity was defined when subjects had BMI >25 k/m² according to the Asian-specific BMI cut-offs. The presence of diabetic retinopathy was assessed by an expert ophthalmologist using dilated fundoscopy.

Results: The attenuation values of P-S and P/S were significantly related to diabetic retinopathy in patients with non-obese T2DM. In the non-obese group, compared with those without, P-S odds ratio (OR) of patients with pancreatic steatosis was 0.192 (95% CI 0.051, 0.727) and P/S OR was 0.12 (95% CI 0.028, 0.515) for diabetic retinopathy, after adjusting for age, gender, and BMI. However, there was no association between pancreatic steatosis and diabetic retinopathy observed in the obese group.

Conclusion: In this study, pancreatic steatosisis was strongly associated with diabetic retinopathy in non-obese subjects with T2DM. This result suggests that pancreatic steatosis might affect the prevalence of microvascular complication in patients with T2DM. However, we still need more studies to define the relationship between pancreatic steatosis and microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus in details.