Correlation of Different Circulating Endothelial Progenitor Cells to Stages of Diabetic Retinopathy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus
Abstract
Purpose
To investigate vasculogenic endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with or without diabetic retinopathy (DR).
Methods
A case-control study comparing 20 normal controls (CO) and 60 patients with T2DM with and without DR was performed. Patients with DR were studied and staged according to ETDRS severity scale. 60 patients were included: 20 without DR (NDR), 20 with nonproliferative DR (NPDR), and 20 with proliferative DR (PDR). EPCs (CD34/CD309) were enumerated by flow cytometry.
Results
The content of EPCs in PDR group (0.0316 ± 0.0294) % was significantly higher than that of the other three groups (χ2 = 43.780, P < 0.05). The content of EPCs of CO group (0.0179 ± 0.0047) % was higher than that of the NPDR group (0.0123 ± 0.1137) % and the NDR group (0.0151 ± 0.0086) % too,but the difference was not significant(χ2 = 5.244, P = 0.73), There was no significant difference of content of EPCs between NPDR group and the NDR group (χ2 = 6.016, P = 0.12).
Conclusions
In patients with T2DM with DR, EPCs undergo stage-related regulation. In nonproliferative retinopathy, a reduction of EPCs was observed, and in proliferative retinopathy,a dramatic increase of mature EPCs was observed.
