Aims/Introduction
The relationship between glycemic variability (
GV
) and diabetic complications has gained much interest and remains under debate. Furthermore, the association of
GV
with diabetic complications has not been examined in latent autoimmune diabetes of the adult (
LADA
). Therefore, we evaluated the relationships among several metrics of
GV
with diabetic retinopathy (
DR
) in patients with
LADA
and type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Materials and Methods
A total of 192 patients with
LADA
and 2,927 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus were enrolled. After continuous glucose monitoring for 72 h, three metrics of
GV
including standard deviation, coefficient of variation and mean amplitude of glycemic excursions were calculated.
DR
was assessed by fundus photography performed with a digital non‐mydriatic camera.
Results
The prevalence of
DR
was 20.3 and 26.4% in
LADA
and type 2 diabetes mellitus patients (
P
<
0.001), respectively. Generally,
LADA
patients had fewer cardiometabolic risk factors than type 2 diabetes mellitus patients, and all
GV
metrics were significantly higher in
LADA
than in type 2 diabetes mellitus. In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, no metrics for
GV
were identified as independent risk factors of
DR
(standard deviation:
P =
0.175; coefficient of variation:
P =
0.769; mean amplitude of glycemic excursions:
P =
0.388) in
LADA
. However, the standard deviation was significantly associated with
DR
(
OR
1.15,
P =
0.017) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus after adjusting for confounders. The independent relationships of coefficient of variation and mean amplitude of glycemic excursions with
DR
(
P =
0.194 and
P =
0.251, respectively) did not reach statistical significance in type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Conclusions
GV
is more strongly associated with
DR
in type 2 diabetes than in
LADA
, suggesting that different glucose‐lowering strategies should be used for these two types of diabetes.
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