Rates of diabetic retinopathy among cluster analysis—identified type 2 diabetic mellitus subgroups

Purpose To determine whether phenotypic clustering of patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) is associated with more advanced diabetic retinopathy (DR). Methods Retrospective cohort study of 495 patients with no prior DR treatment seen at a tertiary care clinic 2014–2020. Four previously identified clusters from Ahlqvist’s 2018 paper were reproduced utilizing baseline hemoglobin A1c, body mass index, and age at DM diagnosis. Age-adjusted Cox proportional hazard ratios were used to compare clusters with reference as the lowest risk cluster. Results All four type 2 DM clusters were replicated with our cohort. There was a significant difference in racial distribution among clusters ( p = 0.018) with severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD) having the higher percentage of Caucasians and lower percentage of Hispanics compared to other groups and a higher percentage of African Americans comprising the severe insulin-deficient diabetes (SIDD) cluster than other groups. Rates of proliferative diabetic retinopathy were higher in mild obesity-related diabetes (MOD) (28%), SIDD (24%), mild age-related diabetes (MARD) (20%), and lowest in SIRD (7.9%), overall p = 0.004. Rates of vitreous hemorrhage were higher in MOD ( p = 0.032) and MARD (0.005) compared to SIRD. Conclusion Baseline clinical measures may be useful in risk stratifying patients for progression to retinopathy requiring intervention.