Association between diabetes mellitus with metabolic syndrome and diabetic microangiopathy

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between diabetes mellitus (DM), mainly type II, with metabolic syndrome (MS) and diabetic nephropathy (DN)/diabetic retinopathy (DR). Based on the analysis of the prevalence of MS, patients with DM were divided into MS and non-MS groups according to the presence or absence of MS. The correlation between DN, DR and certain factors, including gender, age, disease duration and the presence or absence of a family history of MS, were analyzed. The prevalence of MS among the patients with DM was 62.50%. The prevalence of DN was 55.33% in the MS group and that of DR was 26.00%. DN was positively correlated with age, gender, blood pressure, triglyceride (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and blood uric acid. DR was positively correlated with traceable disease duration and LDL-C. In conclusion, DM occurred more frequently in concurrence with MS than without MS, and the prevalence of DN/DR in the MS group was higher than that in the non-MS group. Age, gender, blood pressure, TG, LDL-C and blood uric acid were risk factors for DN and the traceable disease duration and LDL-C were risk factors for DR.