Eye disease reduced by controlling blood sugar in diabetics

A new study has found that maintaining blood sugar levels as near as possible to normal, and taking medication to keep down blood levels of cholesterol, can help those with diabetes from getting the eye disease retinopathy.
Researchers have been investigating whether the control of blood sugar and fats could still deter retinopathy in patients who had been diabetic for as long as a decade. Retinopathy is often associated with diabetes-related complications of the kidney, nervous system and blood vessels. A long period of high blood sugar in diabetics can harm blood vessels in the retina, which can lead to diabetic retinopathy . This can lead to blindness, due to a build-up of fluid in the eye.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study involved patients who had lived with type 2 diabetes for about a decade, with all having to undergo an eye exam at the beginning of the trial and then again after four years.
Although diabetic retinopathy is can be successfully treated with steroid injections, laser surgery and other surgery that removes excess fluid from the eye, none of them can cure the underlying biological process which develops retinopathy.
Barbara Klei, writing in the same issue, said the report “has great importance, particularly because of the increasing prevalence of diabetes related to aging of the population and also the increasing prevalence at younger ages, which is likely to be related to obesity .”