In brief
A student at Queen’s University Belfast will draw on five years worth of information collected by clinics across Northern Ireland to determine whether measuring blood vessels at the back of the eye can help detect the early signs of diabetes-related complications. If so, this practice could become a routine part of UK retinopathy screening.
Background to project
Up to 40% of people with diabetes develop diabetic nephropathy (kidney disease) as a complication and even more will develop diabetic retinopathy. End-stage kidney disease is relatively rare but growing rapidly and treatment consumes over 2% of the total NHS budget. Retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness among the UK working age population and causes more than 2,000 people to lose their sight every year. Methods for earlier diagnosis or more cost-effective treatment of these conditions are therefore highly desirable. Studies show that using a non-invasive procedure to measure the diameter of blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye can help doctors to detect the early signs of eye and kidney complications before they develop. However, previous research has been limited by the relatively small numbers of participants involved, and the relatively short time periods that have been covered.
Project aims
A PhD student supervised by Professor Peter Maxwell at Queen’s University in Belfast aims to determine whether measuring the diameter of retinal blood vessels, as part of the diabetic retinopathy screening programme, can help to identify individuals at high risk of developing renal failure or retinopathy.
To do so they will draw on five years worth of information collected by eye, kidney and diabetes clinics across Northern Ireland. Images of the retina obtained from the patient records of individuals whose kidneys have failed will be compared with those of individuals with normal kidney function. Links between these measurements and kidney and retinal complications will be investigated using appropriate statistical analyses that take into account other factors, such as age, obesity and gender, which could influence these conditions.
Potential benefit to people with diabetes
If this project can successfully demonstrate that retinal blood vessel measurements help to predict the risk of nephropathy and retinopathy, they could become a component of routine retinopathy screening in the UK. Those people predicted to have the highest risk could then receive targeted treatment at an early stage in order to slow or prevent the onset of these complications.