Lp-PLA(2) activity is associated with increased risk of diabetic retinopathy: a longitudinal disease progression study

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: The aim of the study was to examine the association between lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(2) (Lp-PLA(2)) activity levels and incident diabetic retinopathy and change in retinopathy grade. METHODS: This was a cohort study of diabetic participants with serum collected at baseline and routinely collected diabetic retinal screening data. Participants with type 2 diabetes from the GoDARTS (Genetics of Diabetes Audit and Research in Tayside Scotland) cohort were used. This cohort is composed of individuals of white Scottish ancestry from the Tayside region of Scotland. Survival analysis accounting for informative censoring by modelling death as a competing risk was performed for the development of incident diabetic retinopathy from a disease-free state in a 3 year follow-up period (n = 1364) by stratified Lp-PLA(2) activity levels (in quartiles). The same analysis was performed for transitions to more severe grades. RESULTS: The hazard of developing incident diabetic retinopathy was 2.08 times higher (95% CI 1.64, 2.63) for the highest quartile of Lp-PLA(2) activity compared with the lowest. Higher Lp-PLA(2) activity levels were associated with a significantly increased risk for transitions to all grades. The hazards of developing observable (or more severe) and referable (or more severe) retinopathy were 2.82 (95% CI 1.71, 4.65) and 1.87 (95% CI 1.26, 2.77) times higher for the highest quartile of Lp-PLA(2) activity compared with the lowest, respectively. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: Higher Lp-PLA(2) levels are associated with increased risk of death and the development of incident diabetic retinopathy, as well as transitions to more severe grades of diabetic retinopathy. These associations are independent of calculated LDL-cholesterol and other traditional risk factors. Further, this biomarker study shows that the association is temporally sensitive to the proximity of the event to measurement of Lp-PLA(2.) ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00125-018-4601-7) contains peer-reviewed but unedited supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.