Statins May Help Prevent Diabetes-Related Eye Problems

New York, 12 Jan 2019: Diabetic patients who take statins to treat high cholesterol may get an added benefit: a lower risk of damage to the retina, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that diabetic patients taking statins were 14 percent less likely to develop retinopathy than those who were not. And among patients who did develop retinopathy, statin therapy was associated with slower disease progression, according to Dr. Eugene Yu-Chuan Kang, a researcher at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan, and colleagues.

Diabetes leads to retinopathy through damage to the blood vessels in the eyes, said Dr. Szilard Kiss, director of the retina service and director of tele-ophthalmology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

Ultimately, people can go blind from diabetic retinopathy.

“The retina is like the film in a camera,” explained Kiss, who was not involved in the new study. “Diabetes causes the blood vessels to become leaky, which causes swelling in the retina.”

When the blood vessels leak, they spill a host of substances in the blood, including cholesterol into the retina, Kiss said. As of yet, scientists aren’t sure exactly how cholesterol might be causing eye damage.

As reported in JAMA Ophthalmology, the research team pored through the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Database, ultimately finding 740,326 patients who had received a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes between 1998 and 2013 and who also had high cholesterol. The researchers winnowed that number down to 219,359 patients, 199,760 of whom were taking statins and 19,599 who were not.

The researchers ultimately settled on a comparison of 18,947 patients on statins and 18,947 who were not taking the cholesterol lowering medications. After an average follow-up of seven years, retinopathy had developed in 2,004 patients taking statins, or 10.6 percent, compared to 2,269, or 12 percent, of those who did not take the medications.REUTERS