Abstract
Purpose :
High myopia is the major concern of public health worldwide. Pathologic myopia, which is characterized by excessive axial elongation and structural changes in posterior segment such as posterior staphyloma, can lead to visual impairment. In this study, we aimed to investigate the vitreous humor metabolite profiles of pathologic myopia patients with posterior staphyloma using untargeted metabolomics.
Methods :
We performed metabolomics using high-resolution liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry on the vitreous humor of 27 pathologic myopia patients with posterior staphyloma who underwent vitrectomy for the treatment of myopic macular complications. In addition, 47 controls who underwent vitrectomy for idiopathic epiretinal membrane were included. Univariate analyses after false discovery rate correction were performed to discriminate the metabolites and identify the significant metabolites of pathologic myopia. For biologic interpretation, enrichment and pathway analysis were conducted using MetaboAnalyst 5.0.
Results :
The mean axial length was 31.63 mm in pathologic myopia patients and 23.63 mm in controls (P < 0.001). Ninety-six metabolites that distinguished pathologic myopia patients from controls were identified (Ps < 0.05). The inflammatory metabolites, such as lipoxin C4 (3.41-fold) and energy or oxidative metabolites such as succinate (1.17-fold) and nicotinamide (1.16-fold), malondialdehyde (0.73-fold) and amino acids, such as glutamine (1.13-fold), were higher in patients with pathologic myopia. In contrast, citric acid cycle related metabolites, such as oxosuccinate (-0.72-fold) were lower in patients with pathologic myopia.
Conclusions :
Multiple metabolites related to inflammatory and energy were found to be increased in the vitreous humor of pathologic myopia patients, whereas oxosuccinate were reduced, suggesting that altered metabolites related to inflammatory or energy metabolism may be implicated in the etiology of pathologic myopia.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.