Diabetic Retinopathy Lab Report

Diabetic retinopathy (DR), which affects approximately one-third of the 29 million Americans with diabetes mellitus (DM), is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in US working-age adults. Our lab has previously shown a link between specific European mitochondrial haplogroups and DR severity, but not the presence of DR. A follow-up study by the lab showed that higher glycosylated hemoglobin is a proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) risk factor only in DR patients from mitochondrial haplogroup H and not in those from other European mitochondrial haplogroups. The purpose of this study was to use our existing patient cohort to determine if there is a relationship between hemoglobin concentration and DR severity. We also aimed to determine whether mitochondrial haplogroups H and UK are associated with differences in hemoglobin concentrations as a potential mechanism underlying the observed association between mitochondrial haplogroup and DR severity. …show more content…
Each patient had their mitochondrial haplogroup classified and their median hemoglobin concentration calculated. Using the Mann-Whitney U test, we compared the median of all patients’ median hemoglobin concentrations for each major comparison group (DM vs. DR, NPDR vs. PDR, haplogroup-stratified). Adjusted logistic regressions were conducted with DR status or DR severity as the outcome variable adjusting for sex, age, diabetes duration, and median HbA1c.Median hemoglobin concentrations were not significantly different between mitochondrial haplogroups in DM (H = 13.0, UK = 13.0, Other = 13.1, p = 0.841) or DR (H = 12.0, UK = 12.4, 11.9, p =