Study Investigating the Levels and Effects of Low-grade Inflammation in Diabetic Retinopathy of Type 1 Diabetes

Overview

There is much evidence that localized low grade inflammatory processes may contribute to the microvascular complications of type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus including sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy. Some biomarkers for inflammation have been found to be elevated in diabetes patients and correlations between those biomarkers and the severity of diabetic complications have been found in the last years. The relation between this low grade inflammation and the microvascular changes observed in diabetic retinopathy is, however, not well characterized. In the present study patients with different stages of non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy will be included. Several markers of inflammation will be measured from blood samples. These markers will be related to vascular factors including flicker-induced vasodilatation as a marker of endothelial dysfunction and perifoveal leukocyte velocity and density as measured with the blue field entoptic phenomenon. In addition, the ophthalmologic status of the patients will be assessed according to the Modified Airlie House classification. A multiple regression model will be employed to study the association between the different methods.

Conditions

Interventions