Nearly 30 percent of US diabetics over the age of 40 may have a diabetes-related eye disorder, with 4 percent of this population affected severely enough that their vision is threatened, suggests a new study.
The condition, known as diabetic retinopathy, involves damage to the eye's retina and is the leading cause of new cases of legal blindness among US adults between 20 and 74 years old. It also costs the US approximately $500 million every year.
"The number of people with diabetes is increasing in this country," lead researcher Dr Xinzhi Zhang, of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, told Reuters Health.
Yet, he added, estimates of how many Americans suffer from diabetic retinopathy remain more than a decade old. Is this condition on the rise too? Or is screening and treatment keeping it under control?
For some updated answers, Zhang and his colleagues looked to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a large national study conducted between 2005 and 2008. They identified about 1,000 older adults with diabetes who had undergone diagnostic eye imaging.
Of the patients studied, 29 percent were found to have diabetic retinopathy, and 4 percent had developed vision-threaatening cases of the disorder The rates were about 40 percent and two and a half times higher, respectively, than estimates dating back to an earlier NHANES study from 1988 to 1994.