Recent investigations of retinal vascular cells in tissue culture, animal models, and diabetic human subjects suggest several potential pathogenetic mechanisms for diabetic retinopathy. These include the enzyme aldose reductase, which appears to be responsible for basement membrane thickening in galactosemic rats (since the lesion is prevented by an aldose reductase inhibitor), and a picture, in galactosemic dogs, that closely resembles early, background diabetic retinopathy; insulin, which stimulates, and elevated glucose levels, which inhibit in vitro proliferation of retinal pericytes. Various hormones, including the sex hormone, the insulin-like growth factors and, perhaps independently, growth hormones, may influence the later stages of diabetic retinopathy. Chronic hyperglycemia appears to be the primary pathogenetic agent in diabetic retinopathy as well as in other complications of diabetes, but the different rates of onset and progression of these complications suggest that glucose acts through different biochemical pathways that are probably under different genetic control. Finally, the locus of the primary biochemical lesion in diabetic retinopathy may reside in the neuronal or glial cells of the retina, with the retinal blood vessels only secondarily involved.