A 26 year-old Malay man presented with first attack of left eye optic neuritis that recovered fully with intravenous methylprednisolone after 3 weeks. He developed a second attack of optic neuritis in the right eye the following week. Lhermitte sign as well as Uthoff phenomenon were also positive. On day-3, he developed bilateral paraplegia and sensory loss at T8 level, which progressively worsen and became bedridden on day-5. MRI showed bilateral enhance-ment of the optic nerve with the presence of long multisegmental demyelinating plaque in the thoracic to lumbar spinal cord and the brainstem, sparing the brain hemisphere. He was promptly given high dose intravenous methylprednisolone followed by oral predni-solone. He was also assigned on intensive neuro-phy-siotherapy. He recovered after 3 months and was able to walk with walking aids. He recovered completely after 7 months and resumed working as site contactor. There was no relapse during the last 1 year follow-up. His final visual acuity improved to 6/9 in the right eye and 6/6 in the left eye. The visual field of the right eye showed per-sistent mild cecocentral scotoma. And diffuse depression.

Purpose: To determine the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR) and the factors associated with retinopathy among type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) patients in Brunei Darussalam. Methods: Cross-sectional study of all type 2 DM patients who attended diabetic eye screening over a 3-month period at one of four government hospitals. We assessed association between DR with the following variables: age, sex, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), duration of DM, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and microalbuminuria. Results: There were 341 patients (female, 58.9%; mean age, 55.3 ± 11.9 years) with a mean duration of DM of 9.4 ± 7.4 years and mean serum HbA1c of 8.4% ± 1.9%. The overall prevalence of any DR was 22.6% (95% confidence interval, 18.8–27.1) with prevalence rates of 4.1% (95% confidence interval, 2.1–6.4) for proliferative DR and 9.7% (95% confidence interval, 6.8–13.2) for vision-threatening DR. Multivariate analysis showed that DR was significantly associated with certain age groups (reduced in older age groups), longer duration of DM (11 years or more), poor control (HbA1c >9.0%) and presence of any microalbuminuria. Conclusions DR affects one in five patients with DM in Brunei Darussalam, comparable to rates reported for other Asian populations. It is especially worrying that one in ten patients with DM had vision-threatening DR. DR was significantly associated with longer duration of DM, poor control and presence of microalbuminuria but reduced in older age groups. It is important to advocate good control right from the time of diagnosis of DM and institute timely and effective management of retinopathy. DR was significantly associated with longer duration of DM, poor control of diabetes, and presence of microalbuminuria but reduced in older age groups.