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Editors Selection IGR 15-4

Basic Reseach: Amacrine cells

Comment by Jonathan Crowston on:

12236 Changes in retinal neuronal populations in the DBA/2J mouse, Moon J-I; Kim I-B; Gwon J-S et al., Cell and Tissue Research, 2005; 320: 51-59

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Although it is widely accepted that glaucoma leads to selective loss of retinal ganglion cells, the changes that may occur in other retinal cell populations are less well studied. Moon et al. (432) addressed this issue by comparing the retinal cell populations in five 10-month DBA/2J with two B6 wildtype control mice using immunohistochemical techniques. DBA/2J mice develop an age-related hereditary glaucoma involving pigment dispersion and inflammation. The majority of DBA/2J mice manifest advanced glaucoma by 10 to 12 months of age. The DBA/2J retinas had a reduced number

In addition to retinal ganglion cells, a subset of amacrine cells are also lost in this mouse glaucoma model

of retinal ganglion cells confirming that these mice had glaucoma. In addition, there was also a reduction in g-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and choline acetyltransferase (ChaT)-labeled amacrine cells. In contrast, nitric oxide synthase (NOS) labelled amacrine cells were increased. There was no difference in the number of glycinergic amacrine cells, horizontal or bipolar cells compared to controls. These data suggest that in addition to retinal ganglion cells, a subset of amacrine cells are also lost in this mouse glaucoma model. The observed reduction in immunoreactive amacrine cells may, however, be a consequence of reduced neurotransmitter production, rather than a true reduction in cell number. Further studies in a larger number of mice at different stages of disease are now required to confirm whether there is a true change in amacrine cell number.

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