AGER and diabetes mellitus: Since a growing body of work implicates inflammation and nitric oxide in the development of the early stages of diabetic retinopathy [4,5,11-15], we evaluated the effects of a new fusion protein inhibitor of RAGE signaling (RAGE-Ig fusion protein) on the development of diabetes-induced alterations in retinal physiology, inflammation and histopathology in C57Bl/6J mice.