Objective: To identify potential laboratory risk factors for diabetic retinopathy (DR) among diabetic  patients. Methods: In this hospital-based, cross-sectional comparative study, all diabetic inpatients at the  endocrinology department, Yueqing Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University from July 2013 to  June 2015 were included. The fundus images of all participants after mydriasis was taken for the assessment  of DR. Based on the fundus condition, the patients were divided into a DR group and a no-DR group. A t-test  and Chi-square test were used for the comparison between the laboratory findings of the two groups.The  potential risk factors of DR were evaluated by multiple logistic regression. Results: A total of 426 patients  were enrolled in our study. Mean age of the participants was 64.5±11.0. There were 223 patients with diabetic  retinopathy and 203 patients without diabetic retinopathy, based on a fundus assessment by the ETDRSsystem. After multiple regression analysis, it was found that higher levels of fasting blood glucose (OR=1.08,  P=0.014), hemoglobin Alc (HbA1C) (OR=1.15, P=0.004), monocyte (OR=4.02, P=0.014), and proteinuria  (OR=2.15, P=0.014) were positive correlation factor of DR. While higher levels of postprandial 2 hr C-peptide  (OR=0.92, P=0.047), albumin (OR=0.92, P=0.001), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) (OR=0.88,  P=0.030) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) (OR=0.93, P=0.004) were negative correlation factor of DR.  Conclusion: Our study show that some laboratory indexes are associated with the presence of DR and may  be a risk factor for DR. More studies are needed to investigate the causal relationships and mechanisms.