News Article
Visual Impairment Is More Common in People With Diabetes
The prevalence of visual impairment is higher among people with diabetes than in those without the disease, according to a report in the October issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) from 1999 through 2004 suggests that people with diabetes have a 60% higher prevalence of correctable visual impairment (VI) and a 170% higher prevalence of uncorrectable VI than do people without diabetes, said Dr. Xinzhi Zhang of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his associates.
"Previous studies on VI and diabetes have either used data from selected populations, limited to small areas, or [from] self-reported VI outcomes," the researchers noted.
In contrast, NHANES surveyed a nationally representative sample of adults who underwent detailed physical examinations, including assessment of visual acuity both before and after an objective autorefraction test.
Dr. Zhang and colleagues analyzed the findings on 1,237 adults with diabetes and 11,767 without the disease. Uncorrectable VI was defined as visual acuity less than 20/40 in the better-seeing eye after the autorefraction test; correctable VI (that is, impairment from refractive error) was defined as visual acuity worse than 20/40 in the better-seeing eye before the autorefraction test, which was improved to normal after the test.
A total of 11% of subjects with diabetes had VI, including 3.8% with uncorrectable and 7.2% with correctable impairment. In contrast, only 5.9% of subjects without diabetes had VI-1.4% with uncorrectable and 4.5% with correctable impairment, the investigators said (Arch. Ophthalmol. 2008;126:1421-7).
The link between diabetes and VI remained significant after the data were adjusted to control for age, sex, marital status, race/ethnicity, education level, income, type of health insurance, hypertension, smoking status, and body mass index.
These findings are likely to be underestimates because subjects who already were blind, were unable to see in both eyes, or had eye infections at the time of the survey were excluded from the analysis, Dr. Zhang and his associates noted.
"The high prevalence of visual impairment among people with diabetes indicates a need for diverse public-health strategies to reduce the burden of both correctable and uncorrectable visual impairment," they added.
The researchers reported no conflicts of interest.
All articles have been reviewed by members of our Editorial Board or independent referees.
You need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to read the PDF version of these articles. If you don't have Acrobat Reader, click here to download it free.
