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Blindness alert for diabetics
One in 12 diabetes sufferers over the age of 40 has an eye condition that can cause blindness, specialists say. There are 1.4 million people in Britain with diabetes, three in every 100, plus an estimated million who are undiagnosed.
New research suggests that many may also have undetected eye problems. Diabetes is linked with being overweight and experts say the increase of diabetes in children is related to the epidemic of obesity.
The American study says that rates of diabetic retinopathy, a common cause of blindness in the West, are 40.3 per cent in people over 40 and 3.4 per cent when the condition is advanced enough to threaten sight. Dr John H Kempen, of the Wilmer eye institute at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, says in the Archives of Ophthalmology journal that the condition affects approximately two fifths of people aged 40 and over.
