Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in both the developing and developed countries.The “metabolic syndrome” (MetS) is the clustering of abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and elevated blood pressure and is associated with other comorbiditiesincluding the prothrombotic, and proinflammatory state, MetSis clearly associated with macrovascular complications, but its association with microvascular disease as retinopathy is unclear.
OBJECTIVE:
To find out the possible association between DR and MetS.
SUBJECTS AND METHOD:
Four hundred thirty one diabetic patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria were selected for this study The metabolic syndrome was definedfollowing the national cholesterol education program-Adult. treatment panel III guidelines.the ophthalmologic examinations wereperformedbyophthalmologiststoconfirmorexcluderetinopathy.Height,weight,waist circumference and blood pressure were obtained from all participants. Fasting venous blood samples were collected from all the subjects, HbA1c was estimated by high performance liquid chromatography,the serum wasused for analyzing Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG), Total cholesterol (TC), HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) andTriglycerides (TG).
Statisticalanalysis of data was performed using statistically package for social science (SPSS) version 17.0
RESULTS:
The DR prevalence differedsignificantlybetween diabetics with and without metabolic syndrome (20.8% vs. 6.08%)the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in the whole studied sample was 72.6 %. Diabetics with DR hadsignificantlylonger duration of diabetes, had wider WC,higherFBG,higher HbA1c,higher systolic BP,are more likelyto be female,older, have a higher prevalence of MetS, and nonsignificant lower HDL-C and TG.Patients with concomitant MetSand DR hadsignificantly higher FBG, HbA1C, SBP, TG, WC and lower HDL than diabetics with MetS but without DR.theprevalence of DR increased as the numbers of metabolic syndrome components increased.
CONCLUSION:
Diabetic subjects with metabolic syndrome are at higher risk to develop retinopathy. The prevalence of DR increased as the numbers of metabolic syndrome components increased