Silicone oil-induced ocular hypertension and glaucomatous neurodegeneration in mouse
Abstract
Understanding the molecular mechanism of glaucoma and development of neuroprotectants are significantly hindered by the lack of a reliable animal model that accurately recapitulates human glaucoma. Here we sought to develop a mouse model for the secondary glaucoma that is often observed in humans after silicone oil (SO) blocks the pupil or migrates into the anterior chamber following vitreoretinal surgery. We observed significant intraocular pressure (IOP) elevation after intracameral injection of SO, and that SO removal allows IOP to return quickly to normal. This simple, inducible and reversible mouse ocular hypertension model shows dynamic changes of visual function that correlate with progressive RGC loss and axon degeneration. It may be applicable with only minor modifications to a range of animal species in which it will generate stable, robust IOP elevation and significant neurodegeneration that will facilitate selection of neuroprotectants and investigating the pathogenesis of ocular hypertension-induced glaucoma.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for all the figures.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Eye Institute (EY024932)
- Yang Hu
National Eye Institute (EY023295)
- Yang Hu
National Eye Institute (EY028106)
- Yang Hu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#32093) of the Stanford University.
Copyright
© 2019, Zhang et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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