Recent Epidemiological Status of Ocular and Other Major Complications Related to Diabetes Mellitus in Japan

Purpose: To investigate the epidemiological status of diabetes mellitus (DM)-related complications in Japan. Methods: The subjects were 3.11 million Japanese individuals who were registered in the Japanese claim database between 2005 and 2014. Subjects with a diagnosis associated with codes related to DM and/or DM-related complications as classified by the International Classification of Diseases version 10 and those who were prescribed any therapeutic agents for DM were considered to have DM. The status of ocular, renal, and neural complications was investigated. Results: A total of 66,923 patients with DM were included. The prevalence of subjects with DM was 3.8% in 2005 and 4.2% in 2014. The most frequent complication was diabetic retinopathy (23.6%, 95% CI: 21.7-25.5%), followed by diabetic nephropathy (14.8%, 95% CI: 14.0-15.6%) and diabetic neuropathy (4.9%, 95% CI: 4.5-5.3%). Among the subjects with ocular complications, 1.8% had proliferative diabetic retinopathy, 1.1% had diabetic macular edema (DME), 0.3% had neovascular glaucoma, and 1.5% had vitreous hemorrhage. Only DME significantly increased during the study period. The frequencies of the ocular and neural complications significantly decreased, while that of renal complications significantly increased during the study period. Conclusions: Ocular complications were the most common DM-related major complications in Japan. Notably, DME significantly increased in recent years.