PURPOSE To determine whether curcumin induces expression of the defensive enzyme heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and protects cells against oxidative stress in cultured human retinal pigment epithelial cells. METHODS Effective concentrations and toxicities of curcumin were determined after 3 h of curcumin treatment with the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. Confluent...

Structural abnormalities of the blood-ocular barrier were examined in streptozotocin (STZ)-treated hyperglycemic rats, after 9 days, 6 months, and 10 months' duration of "diabetes," and in normoglycemic control animals using the horseradish peroxidase tracer technique combined with light and electron microscopy. The most frequent abnormalities consisted of small areas of diffuse dense staining ...

Purpose To assess the evolution of retinal findings in patients with membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (MPGN) by funduscopy, intravenous fluorescein angiography and optical coherence tomography. Observations Three women and one man were followed for a period of 1.5-37 years. Four patients (8 eyes) had drusen detected at first fundus exam at age 24, 29, 50 and 55. Three patients (6 eyes...

The postnatal proliferative activity of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells and its dependence on intraocular pressure were studied using [3H]thymidine and [14C]thymidine autoradiography in normal and experimentally induced microphthalmic pigmented rats. The regulation of RPE growth by intraocular pressure was shown to involve the control of the number of binucleated cells by means of stimul...

The relative extent of cell mixing in tissues of mouse chimaeras or mosaics can be studied by comparing the distributions of the two cell populations in the tissues. However, the mean patch size is misleading because it is affected by both the extent of cell mixing and the relative contributions of the two cell populations. Previous work suggested that effects attributable to differences in tis...

Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) has only scarcely been associated with ocular symptoms and rarely with retinal disease. In this case we describe a patient with distinct morphological and functional alterations in the retina. The patient presents with characteristic changes in retinal pigment epithelium, autofluorescence, and electrophysiology.

PURPOSE Individual cones were imaged in the living human eye with the Rochester adaptive optics ophthalmoscope. In all eyes, there were large differences in the reflectance of different cones, even when all the photopigment was bleached. To help understand what produces this spatial variation, the investigators explored whether it is a static or a dynamic property of the cone mosaic. METHODS ...

A single-camera, high-speed, polarization-sensitive, spectral-domain optical-coherence-tomography system was developed to measure the polarization properties of the in vivo human retina. A novel phase-unwrapping method in birefringent media is described to extract the total reflectivity, accumulative retardance, and fast-axis orientation from a specially designed sequence of polarization states...