Optometry - Journal of the American Optometric Association
Clinical researchBrain-derived neurotrophic factor in patients with normal-tension glaucoma
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Twenty patients as the case group and 20 people without apparent disease as age-matched control group were tested. The control group consisted of 16 men and 4 women, ranging in age from 40 to 75, and without any apparent ocular or systemic disease.
NTG was diagnosed when the following criteria were present: (1) a wedge-shaped or diffuse retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) defect in an RNFL photograph, (2) an IOP consistently lower than 21 mmHg without medication over at least 5 consecutive
Results
The mean levels of BDNF detected in the tears of the normal male subjects were 77.26 ± 4.93 and 76.4 ± 5.1 in normal female subjects. The mean level of BDNF detected in the tears of the NTG male patients was 24.29 ± 1.45 and 24.45 ± 1.74 in NTG female patients. We found no significant difference in tear BDNF levels according to the subjects' gender in both groups (P > 0.05).
The mean level of BDNF detected in the tears of the normal subjects (male and female) was 77.09 ± 4.84 ng/mL, and the BDNF
Discussion
Although several different etiologies of glaucoma have been presented by scientists, current thinking is that ultimately the visual field is affected through apoptosis of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). The RGCs receiving proper chemical signaling from brain neurons and lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) do not commence the apoptosis. The related brain neurons and LGN impose their neuroprotective effects on the RGCs through a retrograde axonal transport of neurotrophic factors (NTs), especially
Acknowledgements
Dr. Ghaffariyeh has a patent pending: BDNF as biomarker in glaucoma (U.S. application number 61078384). The remaining authors have no financial or proprietary interest in the materials presented herein. This study was done in Dr. Khodadoust Eye Hospital. There is no financial relationship with this center.
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2022, Survey of OphthalmologyCitation Excerpt :Another animal study showed that its injection into the superior colliculus of neonatal hamster led to a 13 to15-fold reduction in RGC death.142 It has been also shown that BDNF levels in the serum of POAG patients and in tears of NTG patients were significantly lower when compared with control group.63,163 Prior experimental studies have shown that both topical and intravitreal BDNF were effective in activating RGC pro-survival signaling pathways after ocular hypertensive damage42,114; however, it seems that the effect is dose dependent.
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2022, Biosensors and BioelectronicsCitation Excerpt :Therefore, tear levels of BDNF may be very useful in assessing disease activity in glaucoma. Ghaffariyeh et al. found mean concentration of BDNF in normal people was 77.09 ± 4.84 ng/ mL, compared to 24.33 ± 1.48 ng/mL in normal tension glaucoma (NTG) patients (Ghaffariyeh et al., 2009). Findings demonstrated that the BDNF concentration was significantly lower in patients with normal tension glaucoma with P < 0.05.