Lin S, Peng Y, Cao M, et al. - In this systematic review and meta-analysis, researchers sought to illuminate the impacts of the aldose reductase (AR) gene C(-106)T polymorphism on diabetic retinopathy (DR) risk. In order to choose relevant studies with an updated date of April 25, 2018, the PubMed, Web of Sciences, Cochrane library, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wan Fang databases were extensively explored in Chinese. Twenty-three studies with an average score of 7.52 for Newcastle-Ottawa Scale analysis were identified, involving 4,313 DR cases and 5,128 diabetes mellitus (DM) control cases. A significant connection was found between the AR gene C(-106)T polymorphism and susceptibility to DR in DM individuals. Findings revealed that significantly increased risks for DR were found in DM type 1, East Asian populations, and Middle Eastern populations in subgroups stratified by DM type and ethnicity. Outcomes suggested that DM individuals with allele T and CT+TT genotype of the AR gene might have a lower DR risk.