Abstract
Purpose :
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the main causes of blindness worldwide. There are several therapeutic options for this condition, but there is a large group of patients that are not treated until they reach the latest stages of the disease.
The vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has been related with diabetic retinopathy and the purpose of this prospective, observational descriptive clinical study is to correlate the serum levels of VEGF as a risk factor for progression of diabetic retinopathy.
Methods :
We recruited 90 patients classified as follows: 30 patients without diabetes, 30 patients without active progression of DR and 30 patients with active progression of DR. This classification was corroborated by biomicroscopy or fluorescein angiography in selected cases.
We quantified VEGF levels by western blot test in serum samples of each patient.
Results :
We could demonstrate that higher levels of serum VEGF were found on patients with active progression of diabetic retinopathy with statistical significance compared to the group of DR without progression (p 0.001) a.d the group without diabetes (p 0.002).
Conclusions :
Serum VEGF quantification could be used as a marker to predict which patients are in higher risk of progression of diabetic retinopathy. Therefor it could be a useful instrument to determine which patients should be treated on earlier stages of the disease, with the intention of avoiding complications of DR and improve their outcome.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.