**1. Introduction**

Diabetus mellitus (DM) is an important public health issue, with a constantly growing prevalence from 4.7% in 1980 to 8.5% in 2014 [1]. In 2019, 463 million adults between 20 and 79 years had DM [2]. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the most frequent microvascular complications of diabetes. Most type 1 DM (T1DM) patients develop DR only after 5 years or even more from the onset of DM, but after 20- year history of disease, 99% present a form of DR [3]. On the contrary, for type 2 DM (T2DM) patients, DR may be present even from the diagnosis, while after 20 years of T2DM, 60% of the patients develop DR [3]. Currently, DR staging is performed depending on the presence of clinical ocular biomarkers, such as microaneurysms, hemorrhages, soft or hard exudates, macular oedema and new vessels. The treatment for DR targets especially the severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) or proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) stage and diabetic macular oedema (DME). The therapeutic options are intravitreal injections with anti-VEGF agents, corticosteroids injections, retinal laser or surgery such as pars plana vitrectomy (PPV). A large body of evidence supports the role of inflammation in the development and

progression of DR. There is evidence that low-grade subclinical inflammation is responsible for many of the characteristic vascular lesions of DR [4]. In this review we provide an overview of several local inflammatory biomarkers of DR laboratory and retinal imaging together with anti-inflammatory therapeutic options.
