Most people with type 2 diabetes are checked for eye disease only after the retina already shows visible harm, which leaves a narrow window for prevention. A clinical proteomics study in PLoS Medicine took a different route. The team measured thousands of circulating blood proteins and asked which ones forecast retinal nerve fiber loss years before it surfaces on imaging. Working across a Guangzhou cohort and UK Biobank, they tied 71 plasma proteins to diabetic retinal neurod