Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the main cause of severe visual impairment in diabetic patients. Most of the existing treatments are aimed at patients with intermediate and advanced stages of vision impairment, and are invasive treatments with limited effects. Therefore, it is urgent for non-invasive new therapies and new targets to prevent the risk of DR or delay the progress of DR. Early optimization of metabolic therapies, which are strict control of blood glucose, blood pressure and blood lipid in the early stage of diabetes, may prevent or improve potential and reversible microangiopathy, however, there is still a lack of comprehensive and effective drug targeted therapy and unified clinical application standards. Therefore, this study summarizes the application of new hypoglycemic drugs and some antihypertensive and lipid-lowering drugs in the prevention and treatment of DR in recent years, in order to provide some reference for the clinical early prevention and treatment of this disease.