Patients with type 2 diabetes who take statins for high cholesterol may have a lower risk of developing diabetic retinopathy, a study suggests.

Such patients were 14% less likely to develop retinopathy than patients who were not taking statins, researchers said.

And among those who did develop retinopathy, statin therapy was associated with slower disease progression, according to study, which was led by Dr Eugene Yu-Chuan Kang, a researcher at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan.

The research team pored through the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Database, finding 740,326 patients who had received a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes between 1998 and 2013, and who also had high cholesterol.