Nail Folds Capillaries Abnormalities Associated With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Progression and Correlation With Diabetic Retinopathy

BACKGROUND: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is an important microvascular consequence of long-term type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and it can lead to blindness if not properly diagnosed and managed. Nailfold video capillaroscopy (NVC) is a non-invasive technique for observing capillary microvasculature. AIM: We aimed to evaluate the nail folds capillaroscopic alterations in patients with T2DM by NVC and correlated the results to DR, and their relation to disease duration and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). METHODS: This cross-sectional study enrolled 62 cases with T2DM (as per the American Diabetes Association criteria). All patients were subjected to NVC and ophthalmological assessment. RESULTS: NVC revealed that Patients with DR showed significantly higher frequencies of tortuous capillaries, branched capillaries and precapillary edema versus non-DR patients with P < .05. The DR patients with longer disease duration (15-20) years had significantly higher frequencies of branched capillaries, tortuous capillaries, microhemorrhages, and dilated apical capillaries. The frequency of tortuosity and precapillary edema were significantly higher in patients with poor glycemic control. The increased capillary width and branched capillaries were detected as predictors of DR in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: NVC is a cost-effective, quick, safe, simple, non-invasive, and newly emerging tool to assess the capillaroscopic alterations in diabetic patients as an indicator of severity of DR.