Obesity negatively impacts corneal nerves in patients with diabetes mellitus

Table 2 Comparisons of corneal nerve metrics between obese and non-obese groups with diabetes

Parameter	Obese	Non-obese	P value
Corneal nerve fiber parameters
CNFD (no. of fibers/mm²)	10.5 ± 5.0	12.4 ± 5.3	< 0.0001
CNFL (total length of fibers mm/mm²)	8.0 ± 2.6	8.6 ± 3.3	0.002
CNBD (no. of branch points on main fibers/mm²)	10.0 ± 7.5	11.6 ± 8.7	0.005
CTBD (total no. of branch points/mm²)	18.1 ± 11.1	19.7 ± 12.3	0.06
CNFA (total nerve fiber area mm²/mm²)	0.0040 ± 0.0013	0.0040 ± 0.0016	0.93
CNFW (average nerve fiber width mm/mm²)	0.022 ± 0.001	0.022 ± 0.001	0.41
CFracDim	1.388 ± 0.050	1.389 ± 0.047	0.69
Corneal sensitivity (cm)	28.3 ± 2.6	28.6 ± 2.5	0.10
Corneal epithelial cell parameters
Density (μm^–2)	0.008 ± 0.001	0.008 ± 0.002	0.14
Size (μm²)	127.5 ± 10.7	125.8 ± 14.0	0.13
Circularity	0.717 ± 0.017	0.718 ± 0.021	0.68

CNFD = corneal nerve fiber density; CNBD = corneal nerve branch density; CNFL = corneal nerve fiber length; CTBD = corneal nerve fiber total branch density; CNFA = corneal nerve fiber area; CNFW = corneal nerve fiber width; CFracDim = corneal nerve fiber fractal dimension
Student’s t-test was used. P values in bold indicate statistical significance

ISSN: 2326-0254