The investigators analysed data from over 57 000 people with type 2 diabetes diagnosed at age 30 years or older and who had no evidence of diabetic retinopathy at their first screening event between 2005 and 2009.
Publishing their findings in the BMJ, they found that the annual incidence of any retinopathy fell from 124.94 to 66.59 per 1000 people over the 4 year study period, whereas referable retinopathy rates increased slightly from 2.02 to 3.54 per 1000 people. For the subset of patients treated with insulin who had had diabetes for ≥10 years, the incidence of referable retinopathy at 1 and 4 years was 9.61 and 30.99 per 1000 people, respectively.
