Dividing the patients according to retinopathy, we found that T1D patients with retinopathy had significantly lower FGF21 concentrations (10.0 ng/L) as compared with the healthy reference group (37.1 ng/L), (p = 0.02).
In multivariate analysis, the odds ratio (OR) for the presence of retinopathy was 0.08 for the FGF21 second tertile when compared with the first tertile (p=0.029).
Serum levels of FGF21 showed a significant difference between the three groups (<i>P=</i>0.003) but the difference between diabetic patients with and without retinopathy was not significant (<i>P=</i>0.122).