a trend towards significancep =0.07
CSME was present in 58/141 (41.1%) Retinal hard exudate formation was found to have statistically significant correlation with the presence of dyslipidemia ( p =0.02), increased total cholesterol ( p =0.002) and LDL levels ( p =0.001) and the correlation with triglyceride levels showed a trend towards significance ( p =0.07) On multivariate analysis, increased total cholesterol showed a statistically significant association with increased retinal hard exudate formation ( p =0.02), whilst the other variables did not.