فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

Introduction: Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world. Incidence andprevalence of diabetes are increasing in developing countries as well as in Iran. Retinopathy isthe most common chronic disorder in diabetic patients. Materials and Methods: In this study,we used the information of diabetic patients’ reports that refer to endocrine and metabolismresearch center of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences to determine diabetic retinopathyrisk factors. We used factor analysis to extract retinopathy’s factors. Factor analysis is usingto analyze multivariate data, in which a large number of dependent variables summarize intothe fewer independent factors. Factor analysis is applied, in both diabetic and nondiabeticpatients, separately. To investigate the efficacy of factor analysis, we used discriminant analysis.Results: We investigated 3535 diabetic patients whose prevalence of retinopathy was 53.4%.Six factors were extracted in each group (i.e. diabetic and nondiabetic groups). These sixfactors were explained 69.5% and 69.6% of total variance in diabetic and nondiabetic groups,respectively. Using original variables such as sex, weight, blood sugar control method, andsome laboratory variables, the correct classification rate of discriminant analysis was identifiedas 67.4%. However, it decreased to 49.5% by using extracted factors. Discussion: Retinopathyis one of the important disorders in diabetic patients that involves a large number of variablesand can affect its incidence. By the method of factor analysis, we summarize diabetic retinopathyrisk factors. Factor analysis is applied separately, in two diabetic and nondiabetic group. Inthis way, 10 variables were summarized into the six factors. Discriminant analysis was used toinvestigate the efficacy of factor analysis. Conclusion: Although factor analysis is a powerfulway to reduce the number of variables, in this study did not worked very well.