KEYWORDS health behavior; chewing betel nut; dilated fundus examination 2 Abstract Background: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) caused by small vessel disease was the main cause of blindness in person with diabetes, and it mainly occurred in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Taiwan was one of the Asian countries with the highest prevalence rate of DR, there were only few studies for the risk of DR in patients with T2DM in Taiwan. According to some studies have shown DR was a major cause of blindness on elderly both in developed and other developing countries. The purpose was to investigate the related risk factors of DR in elderly patients with T2DM. Methods: During July 2010 to December 2017, 4010 T2DM patients without DR were preselected for this study, but 792 patients completed the continuously follow-up evaluation. Patients were invited to have an outpatient visit at least every three months, and they were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire and collect their blood samples. Additionally, statistical methods used independent sample T-test, Chi-square tests and logistic regression in univariate analysis to analyze the relationships between onset DR and each related factor; and finally the optimal multivariate logistic regression model would be determined by stepwise model selection. Results: Of the 792 effective samples, 611 patients (77.1%) progressed to DR and 181 patients