Investigating Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte and C-Reactive Protein-to-Albumin Ratios in Type 2 Diabetic Patients with Dry Eye Disease

ABSTRACT

Background

Patients with Diabetes mellitus (DM) are at risk of developing dry eye disease (DED). We investigated routine laboratory parameters in patients with type 2 DM (T2D) and T2D-DED to identify potential inflammatory markers.

Methods

A retrospective study of 241 randomly selected patients (30 DED non-diabetic, 120 T2D, and 91 with T2D-DED). The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios (NLR), CRP-to-albumin ratios (CAR), and the glycosylated haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) results were correlated between groups.

Results

The NLR and HbA1c were significantly higher in the T2D-DED group (p≤0.001 and 0.0001, respectively) when compared with T2D and DED non-diabetic groups. CAR was insignificantly high in the three groups (p=0.192). A positive correlation was identified between CAR and NLR in T2D-DED patients (p= 0.008).                       

Conclusion

In T2D-DED patients, NLR was significantly high and positively correlate with CAR. These results predicate diabetes with dry eye complications, and biomarker-mediated inflammation may have important roles in DED pathogenesis.

KEYWORDS:

• C-reactive protein-to-albumin ratio
• dry-eye disease
• neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio
• type 2 diabetes
• type 2 diabetes with dry-eye disease

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.