A Prediction Model for Sight-Threatening Diabetic Retinopathy Based on Plasma Adipokines among Patients with Mild Diabetic Retinopathy

BACKGROUND: Accumulating evidence has suggested a link between adipokines and diabetic retinopathy (DR). This study is aimed at investigating the risk factors for sight-threatening DR (STDR) and establishing a prognostic model for predicting STDR among a high-risk population of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). METHODS: Plasma concentrations of adipokines were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In the case-control set, principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to select optimal predictive cytokines for STDR, involving severe nonproliferative DR (NPDR) and proliferative DR. Support vector machine (SVM) was used to examine the possible combination of baseline plasma adipokines to discriminate the patients with mild NPDR who will later develop STDR. An individual prospective cohort with a follow-up period of 3 years was used for the external validation. RESULTS: In both training and testing sets, involving 306 patients with T2DM, median levels of plasma adiponectin (APN), leptin, and fatty acid-binding protein 4 (FABP4) were significantly higher in the STDR group than those in mild NPDR. Except for adipsin, the other three adipokines, FABP4, APN, and leptin, were selected by PCA and integrated into SVM. The accuracy of the multivariate SVM classification model was acceptable in both the training set (AUC = 0.81, sensitivity = 71%, and specificity = 91%) and the testing set (AUC = 0.77, sensitivity = 61%, and specificity = 92%). 110 T2DM patients with mild NPDR, the high-risk population of STDR, were enrolled for external validation. Based on the SVM, the risk of each patient was calculated. More STDR occurred in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group, which were grouped by the median value of APN, FABP4, and leptin, respectively. The model was validated in an individual cohort using SVM with the AUC, sensitivity, and specificity reaching 0.77, 64%, and 91%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Adiponectin, leptin, and FABP4 were demonstrated to be associated with the severity of DR and maybe good predictors for STDR, suggesting that adipokines may play an important role in the pathophysiology of DR development.