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Editors Selection IGR 18-1
Basic Science: Pathophysiology
Comment by Hanspeter Killer on:
73583 Elevated IOP alters the space-time profiles in the center and surround of both ON and OFF RGCs in mouse, Sabharwal J; Seilheimer RL; Tao X et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017; 114: 8859-8864
Sabharwal et al. used mice to elaborate on the effect of elevated intraocular pressure ( IOP) on the space-time profiles in the center and surround of both ON and OFF retinal ganglion cells. IOP elevation was produced by applying a microbead occlusion model. To record the ganglion cell activity a multielectrode array was used that allowed the simultaneous recording form a large population of retinal ganglion cells and to compare them to mice without elevated IOP. The researchers found a IOP induced reduction of the firing rate to light offset for OFF and ON-OFF retinal ganglion cell receptive field center size and linked this to a pressure induced dysfunction in the inner retinal circuitry, especially on the ON cross-over pathways. The speculate that this might be due to an IOP-induced alteration of the retinal ganglion cell dendrites in the OFF lamina.
Given that IOP acts as a scalar force, namely unidirectional, this could identify cells types that seem to be more sensitive to pressure induced damage (previous literature found a higher pressure sensitivity of motion sensitive magno ganglion cells).
The authors suggest that their findings may provide a basis for a new functional tests that could pick up early glaucomatous damage based on such findings.
The authors suggest that their findings may provide a basis for a new functional tests
There is however one question that needs to be solved. Mice are mostly night active while humans are mostly day active. This difference may be crucial in the evaluation of space time behavior. Therefore, care needs to be taken when the results in mice are transferred to humans.
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