The Amelioration of Detrimental Biochemical Anomalies by Supplementing B, C, and E Vitamins in Subjects with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus May Reduce the Rate of Development of Diabetic Retinopathy

Table 4

Cox regression showing variables that influence the development of DWR to DR.

Variables	Coef	Exp (coef)	SE (coef)		value
Group B	1.334	3.795	0.308	4.336
VEGF	0.036	1.036	0.015	2.329	0.0199
MDA	0.072	1.075	0.214	0.337	0.7359

MDA: malondialdehyde; VEGF: vascular endothelial growth factor. The best three-predictor model was selected by carrying out forward and backward stepwise regression procedure. The final model demonstrated that treating patients with only oral antidiabetic medication (Group B) increases the hazard of diabetic retinopathy (DR) by a factor of 3.795, (95% , ): keeping other predictors constant, without vitamin B, C, and E supplements, the risk of DR is increased by 279%. Similarly, for one-unit increase in VEGF, the risk of DR is increased by 3.6% (95% , ) and a unit increase in MDA increases the risk of DR by a factor of 7.5% (95% , ). All the asymptotically equivalent tests (likelihood ratio, Wald, and score tests) unanimously rejected the omnibus null hypothesis that all the regression coefficients are zero with value ≤ .