Deciphering the connection between microvascular damage and neurodegeneration in early diabetic retinopathy

• DOI: 10.2337/figshare.26092057.v1
• Publication Date: 2024-07-05T18:53:34Z
• Authors: Qian Yang; Marina Yasvoina; Abraham Olvera-Ba...; Joel Mendes; Meidong Zhu; Cathy Egan; Adnan Tufail; Marcus Fruttiger
• Keywords: Male; Adult; Complications; Diabetic Retinopathy; Retinal Vessels; Middle Aged; Retina; Capillaries; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Humans; Female; Aged

<p dir="ltr">Diabetic retinopathy (DR), a common diabetes complication leading to vision loss, presents early clinical signs linked retinal vasculature damage, affecting the neural retina at advanced stages. However, vascular changes and potential effects on cells before diagnosis of DR are less well understood. To study earliest stages we performed histological phenotyping quantitative analysis postmortem retinas from 10 donors with without (such as microaneurysms haemorrhages), plus 3 controls 1 case, focusing capillary loss in deeper (DVP) superficial plexuses (SVP) effects. The case exhibited profound whereas ten randomly selected appeared superficially normal. SVP was indistinguishable controls. In contrast, over half showed dropout DVP increased diameter. could not detect any localised cell vicinity capillaries. Instead, observed subtle pan-retinal inner nuclear layer (INL) all cases (p<0.05), independent microvascular damage. conclusion, our findings demonstrate novel biomarker for early-stage diabetes-related damage human retina, people diagnosis. Furthermore, mismatch between questions notion directly causing neurodegeneration DR, so may affect two readouts independently. article Highlights · diabetic histologically analysed but no DR. We found many plexus absence or other manifest signs. also spatially correlated local nonperfusion even tissue Retinal seems therefore stage Deeper perfusion can be useful assess DR.</p>