MedWire News: Diabetes patients with an eye condition called diabetic retinopathy face a significantly increased risk of suffering heart failure, study results show.

Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of long-term diabetes that can cause blindness due to the deterioration of small blood vessels in the eye.

Previous research has suggested that diabetes patients with retinopathy are more likely to develop heart disease and suffer a stroke than those without the eye disorder, explain Dr Tien Wong, from the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and team.

To investigate whether diabetic retinopathy is also associated with an increased risk of heart failure, which arises when the heart can not pump blood effectively around the body, the researchers studied 1021 middle-aged patients with Type 2 diabetes who did not initially have heart disease or heart failure.

Eye tests conducted at the start of the study revealed that 125 participants had diabetic retinopathy.

Over the 9-year monitoring period, the researchers found that 22% of the patients with diabetic retinopathy developed heart failure compared with less than 9% of those without the eye condition.

After accounting for age, gender, smoking habits, diabetes duration, insulin use, blood pressure and other risk factors, the team calculated that patients with diabetic retinopathy were 2.5 times more likely to develop heart failure than those without the eye disease.

Writing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Dr Wong and colleagues conclude: "The presence of diabetic retinopathy signifies an excess risk of heart failure, independent of known risk factors."

They add: "This further supports a contribution of microvascular [small blood vessel] disease to the development of heart failure in people with diabetes."