A recent study suggests patients with diabetes have a higher incidence of acute uveitis, while those with type 1 and poor glycemic control are at the highest risk of developing eye inflammation.

Researchers from the UK retrospectively evaluated just shy of 50,000 patients with diabetes and nearly 900,000 patients without to determine the impact of glycemic control on disease risk. They found that acute uveitis is more common in diabetes patients, specifically those with type 1 diabetes, for whom the odds ratio (OR) was 2.01. All records came from a general practitioner surveillance database.

The study concludes that glycemic control is an important effect modifier for uveitis risk; the poorer the glycemic control, the higher the disease burden. Those judged to have ‘very poor’ control had an OR of 4.72; for ‘poor’ control, OR was 1.57 and for ‘moderate’ control the ratio was 1.20.