Cotton wool spots, venous caliber changes including venous beading, and intraretinal microvascular abnormalities are present but mild.
It is also clearly associated with an increased risk of microvascular complications.
Microvascular decompression treats the cause of the disease without inducing nerve damage.
Probably the most fatal pathophysiological lesion of these is the stasis induced in the the microvascular system by aggregated infected erythrocytes.
Research underway to elucidate the etiology and pathways of diabetic microvascular disease has revealed new targets for drug design.