Publication:

The study of neutrophils to lymphocyte ratio in moderately controlled diabetes (HbA1c 7-9) and its correlation with microvascular complications

Background The study of neutrophils to lymphocyte ratio in moderately controlled diabetes (HbA1c 7-9) and its correlation with microvascular complications are to measure neutrophil lymphocyte ratio in patients with moderately controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus and to determine the correlation between neutrophil lymphocyte ratio and microvascular complications in moderately controlled type 2 diabetes patients.

Methods Prospective, cross-sectional study, carried out on the patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with hba1c levels 7 to 9, who are attending medicine opd and admitted under medicine. Complete blood count, fundoscopy, urine microalbumin and monofilament were analysed in these patients.

Results This study shows that more than half (63%) of the study participants were males and 37% were females. Most of the patients came for follow up (81%). In our study it was observed that patient with microvascular complications like retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy had higher NLR when compared with patients with no microvascular complications.

Conclusions Our study revealed that NLR was significantly raised in T2DM patients with microvascular complications. NLR being a simple, cost effective and easily available investigation can be used for screening tool to detect diabetic micro complications at an earliest especially in a resource constrained setup with limited laboratory facilities. Hence, NLR can be considered as a potential alternative for other costlier inflammatory markers and also a prognostic biomarker of any microvascular complications among T2DM patients.