Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: Glaucoma is usually considered a neurodegenerative disease and one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. There is evidence that an autoimmune mechanism is involved in the development of glaucoma in several patients. Aqueous humor, which is produced in the eye, should provide further information about the role of antibody repertoire in glaucoma. Methods: To analyze the IgG antibody patterns we selected 85 patients for this study. Aqueous humor was taken from healthy volunteers without any ocular disorders (CO, n=71) and patients with normal tension glaucoma (NTG, n=14). Western blot methods were used to detect antibodies against retinal antigens. The complex IgG antibody patterns were analyzed by multivariate statistical techniques. Results: All analyzed aqueous humor samples showed complex patterns of IgG antibodies against retinal antigen. Our multivariate approach could quantify the differences in immunoreactivities and including all peaks the analysis of discriminance revealed a statistical significant difference between the patterns of NTG compared controls (P<0.001). In the NTG group number of peaks is decreased compared to the CO group. Conclusions: We could demonstrate that a different and very complex IgG antibody pattern against retina can be found in aqueous humor. The analysis of these autoantibody patterns could provide further information about the autoimmune mechanisms in the pathogenesis of glaucoma. The significant differences in the antibody pattern in aqueous humor confirm the results of previous studies using sera of glaucoma patients. However, a closer look at the aqueous humor might be more glaucoma specific than serum analysis and therefore is a very important hint of an underlying autoimmune component in glaucoma. In sera many antibodies, some of them unspecific, are found where as aqueous humor, because of the immune–privilege of the eye, is closer to the site of damage in the glaucoma disease.
Keywords: aqueous • retina • anterior segment