Assessing the density of the vitreous body in young people with type I diabetes using multispiral computer tomography

Abstract

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the severe complications of diabetes mellitus (DM). Despite the multiyear research of DR pathogenesis, the role of the vitreous body in DR development has not been sufficiently studied. Purpose: to demonstrate the potentials of multispiral computer tomography for assessing the density of the vitreous body in patients with type I diabetes.Material and methods. 97 practically healthy individuals (the control group) and 137 patients with type I diabetes (the main group), aged 10 to 35, were tested by multispiral computer tomography to assess their vitreous density.Results. DM type I patients showed a higher vitreous body density in the central and preretinal areas than healthy individuals. The two observation groups showed a statistically significant difference in the level of glycemia only, whilst no reliable difference in lipid metabolism was revealed.Conclusion. Multispiral computer tomography is a sufficiently sensitive testing method which allows registering even minor differences in the density of the main components of the vitreous body between healthy people and patients with type I diabetes. The higher density of the vitreous body in type I DM patients is probably associated with a higher level of glycosylation.

Keywords

• vitreous
• type i diabetes mellitus
• multispiral computer tomography
• diabetic retinopathy