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Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a health concern because it leads to complica-tions such as retinopathy. Pakistan has 6.9 million DM affected people that will double by 2025. A study was designed to determine the level of IL-17 in the serum of Pakistani type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients.
Methods: It was a cross-sectional case-control study that included 212 subjects. Subjects without diabetes were labeled as Group-I (30 healthy volunteers), Group-II (30 T2DM without retinopathy), and Group-III (152 T2DM with retinopathy). The serum level of IL-17 was determined by ELISA technique. Data was analysed using SPSS 17.0 and one way ANOVA to observe group mean differences.
Results: More females were in Group-II (83%) and Group-III (66%) compared to Group-I (30%). The age of subjects was higher in Group-III (50 years) and Group-II (49 years) compared to Group-I (34 years). Group-III had longer mean duration of dis-ease (10.51 years) than Group-II (7.76 years). Group-I had increased levels of IL-17 followed by Group-II and Group-III. On comparison, statistically significant dif-ferences were observed among the three groups, and between Group-I and Group-III, but there was no significant difference between Group-I and Group-II, nor between Group-II and Group-III. Further, on comparison of age, gender, and duration of dis-ease there were significant differences while there was no significant difference between the percentages of HbA1c.
Conclusions: Age, gender, and duration of diabetes may contribute in the develop-ment of T2DM retinopathy while serum level of IL-17 was inversely associated with T2DM and retinopathy.
DOI: 10.7754/Clin.Lab.2013.121140
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