In this task, you are given a passage which has a question and the context. You have to generate an answer to the question based on the information present in the context.
Q: Context: To discriminate non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) patients from healthy controls by fluorescence lifetime imaging ophthalmoscopy (FLIO).', 'A prototype FLIO (Heidelberg-Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany) was used to examine the retina of 33 patients and 28 controls. As increased fluorescence of the diabetic lens is known, the lenses of 34 patients and 24 controls were investigated as well. Time-resolved decay was detected in two spectral channels (ch1: 498-560nm, ch2: 560-720nm) and approximated by a series of three exponential functions yielding in lifetimes (', 'Significant differences between patients and controls were found for all fundus lifetime components (\Question: Are fundus autofluorescence lifetimes increased in non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy?
A:
Fundus Fluorescence lifetimes are significantly increased in NPDR while lens lifetimes are shorter in the patient group. Lifetime changes might be indicative for the accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) which enables detection of the disease with high sensitivity and specificity possibly bearing diagnostic merit.