Long-term dopamine treatment may delay onset of diabetic retinopathy
DENVER — Long-term dopamine treatment may be an effective intervention for patients with diabetic retinopathy, according to a presenter here.
“It’s a difficult thing to study because in people it takes a while for diabetic retinopathy to develop,” Rachel S. Allen, PhD, told Healio/OSN at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting. “One way to look at this treatment is to do a retrospective study.”
Allen and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of medical records of veterans with diabetes to determine if long-term levodopa (L-DOPA) or dopamine agonists delay the onset of diabetic retinopathy (DR). They examined data from 463 subjects who had a dopamine prescription for 90 days or longer during the period between diagnoses and 9,783 subjects who had no dopamine prescription. Patient age at diabetes diagnosis, gender, race, tobacco use, comorbidities, blood sugar control and insulin usage were compared.
Dopamine drugs delayed DR onset by approximately 2 years in the group taking L-DOPA, with a similar delay of 1.7 years observed when subjects were matched for race, sex, HbA1c, insulin, oral hypoglycemics, Parkinson’s disease and BMI. Veterans who took L-DOPA and/or a dopamine agonist also displayed a 1.4-year delay in the onset of vascular pathology commonly associated with DR.
“We are really interested to do a prospective study where we treat patients with diabetes with dopamine-related drugs and see if we can postpone visual deficits and also development of the vascular pathology that is the hallmark of diabetic retinopathy,” Allen said.
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Allen RS, et al. Dopamine treatment delays diabetic retinopathy onset in a retrospective study. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 1-4, 2022; Denver.
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