Albuminuria, but not eGFR, tracks diabetic retinopathy severity and retinal ischemia: population-based discovery, clinical replication, and OCTA evidence

Background We investigated whether albuminuria is more consistently associated with diabetic retinopathy (DR) severity than estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and whether it corresponds to an ischemic retinal phenotype on optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Methods This two-part cross-sectional study first analyzed 949 adults with diabetes from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to evaluate the associations of albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR) and