Diabetic eye disease refers to a group of eye problems that people with diabetes may face as a complication of diabetes. All can cause severe vision loss or even blindness. Diabetic eye disease may include, diabetic retinopathy — damage to the blood vessels in the retina, Cataract—clouding of the eye's lens, glaucoma—increase in fluid pressure inside the eye that leads to optic nerve damage and loss of vision. A person with diabetes is nearly twice as likely to get glaucoma as other adults.
Eli Lilly and Company have announced key findings from analyses of prior study data that enhances understanding of vision loss due to diabetic retinopathy, a diabetic microvascular complication that affects an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
With the aging of the population, the number of Americans with major eye diseases is increasing, and vision loss is becoming a major public health problem. By the year 2020, the number of people who are blind or have low vision is projected to increase substantially. These findings appear in the April issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.