Diabetic retinopathy

The retinopathy in diabetic patients is caused by diabetic microangiopathy and it results in blindness. A proliferative and a nonproliferative form can be distinguished.

Epidemiology

Diabetic retinopathy is the most common cause for blindness in industrialized countries. About 10% of patients with insulin dependent diabetes type 2 develop retinopathy.

Test Strategy

The determination of risk of complications is useful at the beginning of a disease process when strategy of diagnotic and therapy has to be scheduled.

Clinical Findings

It was demonstrated that the better is diabetes control the lower the risk of diabetic retinopathy. As progression of the disease can be reduced by proper treatment, the patients with diabetes require regular ophthalmological visits. A drug emerged (ranibizumab) suitable for treatment of macula oedema a variant of diabetic retinopathy.[Error: Macro 'ref' doesn't exist]

Pathogenesis

There is no explanation for the great difference in suceptibility to diabetic retinopathy. But there are still ongoing invertigations correlating retinopathy to genetic polymorphisms.

Systematic

Diabetes mellitus
	Diabetic nephropathy
	Diabetic retinopathy
		PON1
		VEGFA
	Gestational diabetes mellitus
	Hereditary susceptibility to diabetes
	Insulin resistance
	MODY diabetes
	Mitochondrial diabetes
	Neonatal diabetes mellitus
	Noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus 1
	Pancreatogenic diabetes
	Severe obesity and type 2 diabetes
	Susceptibility to type 1 diabetes 01

References:

1.	Kao YL et al. (1998) A variant of paraoxonase (PON1) gene is associated with diabetic retinopathy in IDDM.

2.	Awata T et al. (2002) A common polymorphism in the 5'-untranslated region of the VEGF gene is associated with diabetic retinopathy in type 2 diabetes.

3.	Nguyen QD et al. (2006) Vascular endothelial growth factor is a critical stimulus for diabetic macular edema.

4.	OMIM.ORG article Omim 192240

5.	Wikipedia article Wikipedia EN (Diabetic_retinopathy)