The aim of this work was to appraise the potential associations of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of long non-coding RNA growth arrest-specific 5 () with diabetic retinopathy (DR) in a diabetes mellitus (DM) population. Two loci of the SNPs (rs55829688 and rs145204276) were genotyped via TaqMan allelic discrimination in 449 non-DR patients and 273 DR subjects. The SNP rs145204276 Del/Del showed a significantly higher distribution in the DR group compared to the non-DR group (AOR: 2.487, 95% CI: 1.424-4.344, = 0.001). During subgroup analyses, the non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) subgroup demonstrated a significantly higher ratio of the SNP rs145204276 Del/Del (AOR: 2.917, 95% CI: 1.574-5.406, = 0.001) and Ins/Del + Del/Del (AOR: 1.242, 95% CI: 1.016-1.519, = 0.034) compared to the non-DR population, while the proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) subgroup did not reveal significant differences in either SNP rs145204276 or rs55829688 distributions compared to the non-DR group. Furthermore, patients with a SNP rs145204276 Del/Del showed a significantly shorter DM duration than the wild type (Ins/Ins) ( = 0.021). In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that the SNP rs145204276 Del/Del variant is associated with an increased susceptibility to DR in DM patients, particularly in those patients with NPDR.