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| |  Diabetes Medication Associated With Slower Progression of Retina Disease CHICAGO -- June 9, 2008 --Patients with diabetes who take the medication rosiglitazone may be less likely to develop the eye disease proliferative diabetic retinopathy or to experience reductions in visual acuity, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of Ophthalmology. Lucy Q. Shen, MD, Jules Stein Eye Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, and colleagues reviewed the medical records of 124 patients who were treated with rosiglitazone and who were receiving medical and ophthalmic care at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, Massachusetts, between May 2002 and May 2003. They compared these patients to 158 patients who also had diabetes but were not taking rosiglitazone or a similar medication. At the beginning of the study, 14 eyes of those in the rosiglitazone group and 24 eyes of those in the control group had severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Among those, 7.7% of those in the rosiglitazone group and 29.2% of those in the control group progressed to proliferative diabetic retinopathy after 1 year. After 3 years, 19.2% in the rosiglitazone group and 47.4% in the control group had progressed from non-proliferative to proliferative diabetic retinopathy -- a 59.5% relative risk reduction in the rosiglitazone group. In addition, fewer eyes in the rosiglitazone group than in the control group experienced a loss in visual acuity of 3 or more lines on the vision chart during an average of 2.8 years of follow-up. Rosiglitazone may delay the progression of retinopathy and preserve vision by reducing the formation of new blood vessels, the authors noted. "However, because this study does not rigourously prove that rosiglitazone either reduces the incidence of proliferative diabetic retinopathy or prevents loss of visual acuity, and because there may be adverse effects from therapy, rosiglitazone treatment of patients with diabetes specifically to reduce these ophthalmic complications is not advocated at this time," they wrote. Known adverse effects include fluid build-up, abnormal liver function test, and the worsening of congestive heart failure. "Determination of the full efficacy and clinical role of rosiglitazone in the treatment of proliferative diabetic retinopathy and other angiogenic conditions awaits confirmation of risks and benefits and possibly large-scale definitive studies," the authors concluded.
SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association
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