Study indicates visual impairment rates in type 1 diabetes patients may have fallen over past 25 years.

MedPage Today (10/2, Phend) reported that, according to a study published in the journal Ophthalmology, "visual impairment rates in type I diabetes patients have fallen significantly over the past 25 years." Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed data on "955 patients in an 11-county area of southern Wisconsin who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before age 30." The patients "had five eye examinations over periods from 1980 to 1982, 1984 to 1986, 1990 to 1992, 1994 to 1996, and 2005 to 2007." Notably, even though "a longer duration of diabetes was associated with higher prevalence of visual impairment," the "annualized incidence of loss of visual acuity to 20/40 or worse that was associated with type 1 diabetes fell significantly from 1.19 percent in 1980-1982 to 0.30 percent in 2005-2007."