Relationship of corneal thickness and corneal endothelium morphology to duration of diabetes mellitus
GUO Yan1,KONG Fanyong2,YU Yongbin3
1.Department of Ophthalmology, Qinghai Provincial Corps Hospital of Chinese People’s Armed Police Forces, Xining 810000, China; 2.Aksu Detachment of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Corps, Chinese People’s Armed Police Forces, Aksu 843000,China； 3. Department of Ophthalmology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150001, China
Abstract：Objective To assess the change of central corneal thickness (CCT) and corneal endothelium morphology in diabetes mellitus compared with age-matched, healthy control subjects and to test their correlation according to the duration of diabetes. Methods Ultrasound tachymetry and noncontact specular microscopy were performed on 120 patients with diabetes diagnosed by endocrinologists and on 60 control subjects. We compared the values for diabetics and normal persons with ANACOVA to adjust for age. Moreover, we also evaluated the correlation between corneal factors in diabetes and the duration of diabetes using a partial correlation coefficient controlled for age. Results The diabetic subjects had thicker corneas, less cell density and percentage of hexagonal cells,and more irregular cell size of the corneal endothelium than did the controls (P<0.05). Central corneal thickness and the coefficient of variation for cell size significantly increased for diabetes of over 10 years’ duration compared with diabetes of under 10 years’ duration (P<0.05). The endothelial cell density and percentage of hexagonal cells were lower for diabetes of over 10 years’ duration than for diabetes of under 10 years’duration, but not significantly different (P>0.05). Conclusions The central corneal thickness is significantly correlated with the duration of diabetic mellitus after controlling for age.
2013, Vol. 24 
