To validate the fold change alterations in a larger and independent set of donor samples obtained from 22 postmortem donors without diabetes, 22 with diabetes but without retinopathy, and 20 with diabetes and retinopathy (Table 4), qPCR analysis was performed for multiple genes, including LPCAT3, which showed the same direction alterations in both the central and peripheral retina, although statistical significance of LPCAT3 fold change in peripheral retina mitigated to borderline after multivariate adjustment for other covariates (Figure 5, bottom panel). Here, LPCAT3 is linked to diabetes mellitus.