The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the world's leading charitable funder of type 1 diabetes research, announced today that JDRF-funded researchers have identified a group of proteins that may play critical roles in causing blood vessel leakage in the eyes of people with two forms of diabetic retinopathy.

Although health professionals have had success in treating diabetic retinopathy, two forms of the disease - proliferative diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema - still are the leading causes of vision loss and blindness among working age adults in the developed world.