Purpose: To inspect the usefulness of cellular systemic inflammatory markers (i.e. white blood cells including lymphocytes; monocytes and neutrophils in addition to platelet count, mean platelet volume, and their ratios) as markers for developing diabetic macular edema in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients.
Methods: This study was a cohort comparative study and included 80 patients who were diagnosed with type 2DM, the subjects were divided into 2 groups; group A included 40 patients with type 2DM without DME, group B included 40 patients with type 2DM with DME and group C (control group) included age and sex-matched 40 nondiabetic patients. Spectral-domain OCT was done for diabetic patients to detect the presence of macular edema. Laboratory investigations included assessment of HbA1C, Neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, platelet counts, and mean platelet volume (MPV).
Results: HbA1C was elevated in group B than group A and group C with statistically significant difference, in the same way it was higher in group B than other groups in MPV, M/L, P/L and MPV/L and NLR with statistically significant difference in all mentioned except NLR. There was a statistically significant difference between group A and group B in MPV, M/L, P/L and MPV/L, as well as a statistically significant difference between group A and group C in M/L and MPV/L.
Conclusion: The current study demonstrated that there was a strong correlation between DME and the inflammatory markers which was believed to play an essential role in its pathogenesis and could be used as promising markers for diagnosis.