Abstract
Purpose::
Although intravitreous injection of anti-inflammatory corticosteroid was reported to be effective for reduction of macular edema in patients with both retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and diabetic macular edema (DME), detail mechanisms still remain unclear. This study is aimed to investigate the relationship between macular edema and vitreous level of inflammatory cytokine/chemokine, including SDF-1 and RANTES in patients with RVO and DME.
Methods::
Seventeen patients in RVO with macular edema and 16 in DME, who scored worse than logMAR 0.3 visual acuity, were studied. All patients underwent pars plana vitrectomy (PPV). At the time of PPV, vitreous samples were collected from the operated eye, and vitreous levels of SDF-1 and RANTES were measured using a sandwich ELISA Best corrected logMAR visual acuitiy (BCVA) and averaged foveal thickness (FT) with an OCT was recorded in each patient before PPV.
Results::
Vitreous level of SDF-1 was 62.2 ± 12.5 pg/ml in BRVO group and which is significantly lower than that in DME group of 188.6 ± 137.6 pg/ml. In contrast, vitreous level of RANTES was 3131.2 ± 688.2 pg/ml in BRVO group, which is significantly higher than that in DME group of 2225.5 ± 862.6 pg/ml. Vitreous level of SDF-1 was not correlated with FT and BCVA in both groups, however that of RANTES was strongly correlated with FT and BCVA.
Conclusions::
Inflammatory chemokine of RANTES was induced by macular edema caused by both vascular occlusion and diabetic retinopathy, in contrast inflammatory cytokine of SDF-1 was elevated only in diabetic edema. Although the pathogenesis of macular edema in both groups are closely related with inflammation, secretion of RANTES is closely related with macular edema, in contrast secretion of SDF-1 is specific to diabetic edema, which suggests that there exist different mechanisms of inflammation associated macular edema between RVO and DME.
Keywords: cytokines/chemokines • diabetic retinopathy • vascular occlusion/vascular occlusive disease