Abstract
Purpose :
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of intravitreal pirfenidone for inhibition of proliferative vitreoretinopathy in a model of penetrating ocular injury.
Methods :
Penetrating trauma was induced on the retina of rabbit and treated either with 0.1 ml of PBS or 0.1 ml of 0.5% pirfenidone, and development of PVR was evaluated clinically and graded after one month. Histopathology and immunohistochemistry with α SMA and collagen-1 were performed to validate further the clinical assessment. A similar injury was inflicted in rat eye and treated either with 10 µl of PBS or 10 µl of 0.5% pirfenidone, expression of cytokine at different time points were examined by RT-PCR. Availability of pirfenidone in the vitreous of rat at various time points was determined by HPLC following injection of 10 µl of 0.5% pirfenidone. In normal rabbit eye, 0.1 ml of 0.5% pirfenidone was injected to evaluate any toxic effect.
Results :
Prevention of PVR formation was observed clinically in animals injected with pirfenidone, and the animals obtained significantly (p<0.05) lesser PVR grade than the PBS-treated control animals. Pirfenidone inhibited increased expression of cytokines as observed in control eyes. Pirfenidone could be detected up to 96 hrs in the vitreous of rat eye following single intravitreal injection. Pirfenidone did not show any adverse effect following intravitreal injection; eyes were devoid of any abnormal clinical sign, IOP and ERG did not show any significant change and histology of retina remained normal.
Conclusions :
Pirfenidone can provide a potential and safe therapy for PVR
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.