Abstract
Purpose :
Retinal light injury models can be useful in understanding aspects of retinal degeneration, iatrogenic phototoxicity, and retinal oxidative stress. Pigmented mice are notoriously resistant to light injury. This is an important issue since many models of retinal diseases are based on a C57BL/6J background. Our aim was to develop a model of retinal light injury applicable to pigmented B6J mice.
Methods :
C57BL/6J mice (6-12 wk old) were exposed to different light levels. Eyes were monitored with fundus photography, OCT, fluorescein angiography and ERG. Eyes were collected at different time-points to test expression changes in oxidative stress-related genes using an RT2 Profiler PCR Array (Qiagen). Histological analysis was performed at the end of the experiment.
Results :
We were able to induce retinal light injury in C57BL/6J mice. The observed fundus, anatomical (OCT), functional (ERG) and molecular changes were found to be dose and time dependent. The severity of the light injury could be titrated. An OCT scale of injury was developed.
Conclusions :
A new light injury model is developed. This model may be applied to many currently available models of retinal degeneration to determine the effects of oxidative stress and phototoxicity.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.