purpose: retinopathy of prematurity (rop) adversely affects normal ocular vascularization in premature infants. it can be mild with no visual consequences, or may become aggressive with new vessel formation and even progress to retinal detachment and blindness. modern treatment can prevent blindness due to neovascularization but uncorrected refractive errors may lead to amblyopia. methods: in t...

Recent evidence suggests that transient hyperglycemia in extremely low birth weight infants is strongly associated with the occurrence of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). We propose a new model of Neonatal Hyperglycemia-induced Retinopathy (NHIR) that mimics many aspects of retinopathy of prematurity. Hyperglycemia was induced in newborn rat pups by injection of streptozocine (STZ) at post nat...

Proliferative retinopathies, such as those complicating prematurity and diabetes, are major causes of blindness. A prominent feature of these retinopathies is excessive neovascularization, which is orchestrated by the hypoxia-induced vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) stimulating endothelial cells and the integrin-mediated adhesive interactions of endothelial cells with extracellular mat...

AIMS Ischemic retinal diseases such as retinopathy of prematurity are major causes of blindness due to damage to the retinal microvasculature. Despite this clinical situation, retinopathy of prematurity is mechanistically poorly understood. Therefore, effective preventative therapies are not available. However, hypoxic-induced increases in reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been suggested to be...

Pathological angiogenesis is the most common cause of blindness at all ages including retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration. Despite advances in therapy, retinopathy of prematurity remains the most sight-threatening vaso-proliferative retinopathy in children. Herein, we demonstrated that rosmarinic acid has an anti-angiogenic activity to retinal ...

PURPOSE The role of microglia, present in the retina early in development before vascularization, remains ill defined. The authors investigated whether microglia are implicated in retinal blood vessel formation. METHODS The microglia and vasculature of developing human fetal and rodent retinas were examined by labeling the endothelial cells with lectin and the microglia with CD18 antibody or ...

The discovery that inhibition of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) suppressed neovascularization revolutionized the management of neovascular retinopathies, such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. Anti-VEGF agents are now used to treat the end stages of these diseases when neovascularization and vascular leakage has developed and vision is threatened. However,...

Ischemia-induced hypoxia elicits retinal neovascularization and is a major component of several blinding retinopathies such as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), diabetic retinopathy (DR) and retinal vein occlusion (RVO). Currently, noninvasive imaging techniques capable of detecting and monitoring retinal hypoxia in living systems do not exist. Such techniques would greatly clarify the role of ...

Vision loss associated with ischemic diseases such as retinopathy of prematurity and diabetic retinopathy are often due to retinal neovascularization. While significant progress has been made in the development of compounds useful for the treatment of abnormal vascular permeability and proliferation, such therapies do not address the underlying hypoxia that stimulates the observed vascular grow...