Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
OBJECTIVES: To date, the relationship between C-reactive protein (CRP) level and diabetic retinopathy (DR) remains controversial. Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis was used to reveal the potential relationship between CRP level and DR. METHODS: A systematic search of PubMed, Embase.com, and Web of Science was performed to identify all comparative studies that compared the CRP level of two groups (case group and control group). We defined that diabetic patients without retinopathy and/or matched healthy persons constituted the control group, and patients with DR were the case group. RESULTS: Two cross sectional studies and twenty case control studies including a total of 3679 participants were identified. After pooling the data from all 22 studies, obvious heterogeneity existed between the studies, so a subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis were performed. Removing the sensitivity studies, the blood CRP levels in the case group were observed to be higher than those in the control group SMD = 0.22, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.11-0.34, and the blood CRP levels in the proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) group were also higher than those in the non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) group SMD = 0.50, 95% CI, 0.30-0.70. CONCLUSIONS: The results from this current meta-analysis indicate that the CRP level might be used as a biomarker to determine the severity of DR.
Song et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: