The pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy is complicated. The vast network of multiple factors including unifying mechanism, inflammatory reaction, neuron degeneration and metabolic memory of glucose, and the four established pathogenic molecular pathways are hotspots of mechanism research for diabetic retinopathy. Nevertheless, these researches may be only one corner of the ldquo;icebergrdquo; of DR mechanism, and we still face enormous challenges in DR mechanism research. Collaboration with multiple disciplines to study the relationship between DR and diabetes and other systemic diseases, search novel therapy targets may increase the result in an unexpected windfall for DR basic research.
The application of gene therapy in ocular diseases is gradually expanding from mono-gene inherited diseases to multigene, multifactorial, common and chronic diseases. This emerging therapeutic approach is still in the early exploratory stage of treating diseases, and the expected benefits and risks remain highly uncertain. In the delivery process of gene therapy drugs, viral vector is currently one of the most mature and widely used vectors. The occurrence of vector-associated immunity will affect the short-term and long-term effects of gene therapy, and even cause permanent and serious damage to visual function. Therefore, gene therapy vector-associated immunity is the focus and challenge for the safety and long-term efficacy of gene therapy. During the perioperative and follow-up of gene therapy, attention should be paid to the monitoring of vector-associated immune inflammation, and appropriate measures should be taken to deal with the corresponding immune response, so as to achieve the best visual benefits for patients.
The abnormalities of retinal vessels such as retinal arteriolar narrowing, arteriovenous nicking, micro-aneurysms, retinal hemorrhages, and cotton wool spot are closely related to systemic diseases including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disorders, stroke and renal diseases. The modern retinal vessels examination technology has features of quick noninvasive, quantitative standardized and intelligent analysis. Taking advantage of these to fully discover the retinal vascular abnormalities and get deeper understanding of the relationship between its' mechanism and systemic vascular diseases is not only helpful to better diagnose and treat retinal vascular diseases, but also contributes to predicting the risk and prognosis of systemic diseases. We suggest emphasizing on the study of correlation between retinal vascular abnormalities and systemic vascular diseases using modern retinal vessels examination technology. It will provide the preventive clue of diseases of circulatory system by finding out the retinopathy. Meanwhile, correctly treating systemic diseases would get a better prognosis of the retinopathy. They exist side by side and play a part together for providing a better prognosis, which would be a new direction for the doctors and scientists in the new era.
The data related signs of ocular fundus associated with COVID-19 published in this journal collected from December 2022, while the pandemic of COVID-19 was in a clustering occurrence. The signs of ocular fundus including acute macular neuroretinopathy (AMN), cotton wool spots or Purtscher-like retinopathy, central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) and macular edema of unknown etiology. The different lesions can be concurrent existence in some cases is one of the clinical characteristics of COVID-19, other characteristics including both eye involved, predominated affected more women, aged from 13 to 56 years. AMN was mentioned recently in most papers on COVID-19, it has been known as deep capillary ischemia. Cotton wool spots is sign infarct in superficial capillary. Retina dots indicated retinal infarct in the outer plexiform layer. CRVO was demonstrated that the blood clot blocks the flow of blood at the level of the lamina cribro, optic disc edema with macular subretinal fluid showed the retina tissue as well as optic head affected. Eye is part of the body, lesions of ocular fundus are identical with body system. Several study proposed different hypothesis for these alterations in acute phase of COVID-19: direct viral endothelial injury, activation of the immune response by a cytokine storm leading to a procoagulant state or transient hypercoagulability. Retina lesions demonstrated a vasculature impairment in several layers of retina and edema in retina and optic disk. We should monitor in the acute phase of COVID-19 the prothrombotic markers and the treatment should consider anti-virus and preventing thrombosis formation.
Outer retinopathy does not refer to a specific type of retinal disease. Patients with outer retinopathy often have abnormal vision symptoms, however, no positive signs can be found with conventional routine eye examination. And the diseases are often labeled “occult”. In recent years, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been widely used in clinical practice. It has been found that many so-called “occult” diseases are actually caused by structural abnormalities of the outer retina. The causes of structural abnormalities are diverse, and the treatments and disease outcomes are also different. Therefore, it is necessary for clinical ophthalmologists to get detailed medical history, make diagnosis and differential diagnosis based on multi-model imaging, rather than roughly name it as “outer retinopathy”. With the development of OCT imaging technology, higher resolution images reveal the finer structure of retinal tissue, allowing us to have a deep understanding of the disease, thus improving diagnosis and treatment in clinical practice.
In the research process of uveal melanoma (UM), the Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study (COMS) is a landmark and outstanding clinical study. Its research conclusions are the foundation for today's UM clinical work and guidelines. COMS is the first and largest randomized clinical trials conducted to date, comparing the survival outcomes of two or more treatment regimens for primary malignant intraocular tumors with high reliability. Its research design, methods, and conclusions are still widely cited in this day. Learning from the research experience of COMS, summarizing research data based on Asian populations, and studying treatment methods suitable for Asian UM patients is a powerful supplement to COMS data, but also an expansion of this global research, further improving the level of UM diagnosis and treatment in China.
Plasma exchange (PE) is a therapeutic blood component replacement method. The blood of patients is first separated into plasma and blood cell components using a blood cell separator in vitro, the plasma containing harmful pathogenic substances is then discarded and replaced with the same volume of exchange solution. Finally the separated blood cells together with the exchange solution are returned back to the blood circulation of patients. By reducing the circulating antibodies, abnormal plasma proteins or cytokines and other pathogenic molecules, PE can block the disease process. PE has a good therapeutic effect on neuromyelitis optica-related optic neuritis (NMO-ON), which shows resistant to glucocorticoid therapy for the first onset. The American Society for Apheresis guideline evaluates PE for acute optic neuritis as a recommended grade 1B, type II indication. In the implementation of PE treatment for NMO-ON and other diseases, indications and contraindications should be strictly adhered to the guideline, treatment procedures and protocols should be optimized, common adverse events and its prevention and management should be known and alerted. It is important to conduct multi-center clinical cooperation and a high standard clinical randomized controlled study, to find out the optimal time window, the best protocol, and the associated factors for the efficacy and prognosis of PE in NMO-ON.
Vitrectomy is the preferred surgical method for diabetic retinopathy, especially in the stage of proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Vitrectomy for diabetic retinopathy involves all aspects of vitrectomy, which is one of the signs of maturity of retinal surgeons. With the application of minimally invasive vitrectomy and perioperative anti-neovascularization drugs, indications and timing of surgery, perioperative medication, management of vitreous, and whether combined with cataract surgery have changed greatly, and new understanding is needed. Evidence-based clinical research on the timing of diabetic retinopathy surgery and perioperative drug use should be carried out to provide a new theoretical basis for the surgical treatment of diabetic retinopathy.
Prevention and treatment of infants and young children can avoid blindness, effectively reduce the incidence of children's blindness and vision loss. Eye diseases causing blindness in infants and young children mainly include retinopathy of prematurity, retinoblastoma, familial exudative retinopathy, persistent embryonic blood vessels, vitreous hemorrhage, congenital cataract, etc. Most of them are preventable and controllable, however, many diseases have strict requirements for the effective treatment time window. The basic form and path to carry out the prevention and control of blinding eye diseases in infants and young children are building a prevention and control system with a combination of multi-party medical forces, referral to pediatric eye disease institutions with relevant technical resources for further diagnosis and treatment, so as to achieve early detection, standardized treatment and visual training.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has developed from time-doma in into Fourier-domain OCT (FD-OCT) which indicates clearer details and higher resolution of images. FD-OCT can indicate the structure and pathological changes of each retinal layer, and reveal the retinal external limiting membranes and changes of inner- and outer-segment of visual cells by 3D solid reconstruction. FD-OCT not only provide detailed information of the images for the clinical diagnosis, but also help us investigting the characteristics and pthological mechanisms of ocular fundus diseases, which lead us to a new era of technology of observation on ocualr fundus diseases. In the application, we should pay attention to the significance of different colors of OCT images, and focus on the cohenrence of the position in the image acquistion during the follow-up period. Dynamic observation on the lesions by FD-OCT and aggregated anaylsis of resutls of several imageological examination would be the development direction of imageological examination of ocular fundus diseases.
