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Aim: To investigate the difference in the initial surgical results between a new monofocal intraocular lens (IOL) with enhanced intermediate vision and the standard monofocal IOL in patients with retinal disease., Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients with retinal disease who underwent cataract surgery due to accompanying cataracts. Types of retinal diseases were investigated and best-corrected distant visual acuity, distant uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), intermediate UCVA, near UCVA, and spherical equivalent were recorded at each visit. The surgical results were investigated at 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month after surgery., Results: Seventeen eyes treated with a new monofocal IOL enhanced for intermediate vision (ICB00 group) and 18 eyes treated with the standard monofocal IOL (AAB00 group) were included in this study. There were no significant differences in the baseline characteristics, including the type of underlying retinal disease, between the groups. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of distant, intermediate, or near UCVA at day 1 and week 1 after surgery. However, at 1 month after surgery, the ICB00 group showed a significantly better intermediate vision improvement than the AAB00 group (p = 0.001)., Conclusion: Even in patients with cataract accompanied by retinal disease, the use of the ICB00 IOL showed significant improvement in intermediate vision compared to the use of the AAB00 (standard monofocal) IOL. The ICB00 IOL might be a good option for patients with cataract and retinal disease in the era of increased intermediate vision needs in daily life., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.)

Background: Tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA) is a naturally produced hydrophilic bile acid that has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine. Numerous recent in vitro and in vivo studies have shown that TUDCA has neuroprotective action in various models of retinal disorders., Objective: To systematically review the scientific literature and provide a comprehensive summary on the neuroprotective action and the mechanisms involved in the cytoprotective effects of TUDCA., Methods: A systematic review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA (The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. Systematic literature search of United States National Library of Medicine (PubMed), Web of Science, Embase, Scopus and Cochrane Library was performed, which covered all original articles published up to July 2022. The terms, "TUDCA" in combination with "retina", "retinal protection", "neuroprotection" were searched. Possible biases were identified with the adopted SYRCLE's tool., Results: Of the 423 initially gathered studies, 24 articles met inclusion/exclusion criteria for full-text review. Six of them were in vitro experiments, 17 studies reported in vivo data and one study described both in vitro and in vivo data. The results revealed the effect of TUDCA on different retinal diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP), diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinal degeneration (RD), retinal ganglion cell (RGC) injury, Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON), choroidal neovascularization (CNV), and retinal detachment (RDT). The quality scores of the in vivo studies were ranged from 5 to 7 points (total 10 points), according to SYRCLE's risk of bias tool. Both in vitro and in vivo data suggested that TUDCA could effectively delay degeneration and apoptosis of retinal neurons, preserve retinal structure and function, and its mechanism of actions might be related with inhibiting apoptosis, decreasing inflammation, attenuating oxidative stress, suppressing endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and reducing angiogenesis., Conclusion: This systematic review demonstrated that TUDCA has neuroprotective effect on in vivo and in vitro models of retinal disorders, reinforcing the currently available evidence that TUDCA could be a promising therapeutic agent in retinal diseases treatment. However, well designed clinical trials are necessary to appraise the efficacy of TUDCA in clinical setting., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)

Purpose: To evaluate short-term peripapillary structural and vascular changes in DME after treatment with dexamethasone implant (DEX-I) and anti-VEGFs using OCT-A., Methods: Sixty-five patients with naïve center-involving DME were enrolled. 33 of sixty five patients (group 1) underwent with single DEX-I 0.7 mg (Ozurdex, Allergan, Inc., USA), 32 of sixty-five (group 2) underwent with intravitreal injection of aflibercept 0.5 mg (Eylea, Bayer, Genentech, San Francisco, USA). The OCT acquisition was completed at the following visits: (i) "T1 visit" corresponding to the intravitreal injection of DEX-I or aflibercept in patients with naïve center-involving DME (ii) "T2 visit" corresponding to the examination performed 2 weeks after intravitreal injection of aflibercept and 1 month after DEX-I. The parameters analyzed were: (i) RPC vasculature density (VD); (ii) peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) thickness, and (iii) intraocular pressure (IOP)., Results: The RPC analysis showed a VD increase at T2 in both groups, although values did not reach statistical significance (48.12± 4.17 and 49.04 ± 4.23; P = 0.081 in Group 1 and 46.93± 3.16 and 47.17 ± 3.70; P = 0.087 in Group 2). Likewise, the pRNFL thickness and IOP fluctuations did not show statistically significant changes in in both groups among the different study visits., Conclusions: After intravitreal injection (anti-VEGF or DEX-I), no significant short-term changes were found in peripapillary microvasculature, IOP and pRNFL thickness in diabetic eyes treated with anti-VEGF or DEX-I., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsNo potential conflicts of interest declared from the authors.

Background Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a progressive disease involving the macular region of the retina and is considered a significant cause of vision loss worldwide. With the increase in life expectancy in various countries, this problem has become more apparent. We retrospectively evaluated the prevalence of AMD among patients visiting the retina clinic at King Abdulaziz University Hospital (Jeddah, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia) to identify the commonly associated risk factors of AMD. Methods The records of 3,067 individuals from 2017 to 2021 were reviewed. Of these, 1,935 were enrolled in the study. Results The prevalence of AMD among the patients was 4%. Regarding non-modifiable risk factors, age and having a family history of AMD showed a significant association (p = 0.001 and 0.043, respectively). However, sex and nationality were not significantly associated. As for modifiable risk factors, smoking and hypertension demonstrated a significant relationship (p < 0.001 and p = 0.002, respectively). However, the association with diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia was not significant. Conclusion Our study shows that AMD is widely prevalent in Saudi Arabia and is associated with age, family history, smoking, and hypertension. Therefore, patients at risk of AMD must be screened and managed promptly before disease progression., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright © 2023, Abusharkh et al.)

The rise in preterm births and higher survival rates of premature infants have led to a global increase in retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a vasoproliferative retinal disorder common in premature infants. ROP is one of the leading causes of childhood blindness. Clinical manifestation of ROP ranges from mild abnormal retinal neovascularization to bilateral retinal detachment and vision loss. The incidence of ROP is higher in middle income countries, including India, which has the highest number of global preterm births. Low birth weight and low gestational age are the primary risk factors for ROP; however, anemia, cardiac defects, blood transfusion, apnea, sepsis, respiratory distress syndrome, high exposure to oxygen and poor postnatal weight gain may also contribute to its development. India has stringent ROP screening guidelines revised in 2018, and screening of infants with either birth weight <2000 grams or gestational age <34 weeks is mandated. With an improved understanding of the pathogenesis of ROP in the past decades and advances in clinical research, treatment for ROP has evolved from cryotherapy to laser retinal ablation. Most recently, anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) drugs have emerged as a favorable treatment option for zone-I and II ROP. This article reviews the current approaches for ROP treatment in India with a particular focus on anti-VEGF drugs. The article also integrates the understanding of safety and risk-benefit evaluation of the current approaches in ROP management. The review concluded that there is a need to increase the ROP screening not only for preterm and low birth weight but also for optimal gestational age infants with healthy birth weight. Anti-VEGF therapies have shown improved efficacy, although studies are required to establish the long-term safety., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (© 2023 Dogra and Vinekar.)

Iron plays an important role in a wide range of metabolic pathways that are important for neuronal health. Excessive levels of iron, however, can promote toxicity and cell death. An example of an iron overload disorder is hemochromatosis (HH) which is a genetic disorder of iron metabolism in which the body's ability to regulate iron absorption is altered, resulting in iron build-up and injury in several organs. The retina was traditionally assumed to be protected from high levels of systemic iron overload by the blood-retina barrier. However, recent data shows that expression of genes that are associated with HH can disrupt retinal iron metabolism. Thus, the effects of iron overload on the retina have become an area of research interest, as excessively high levels of iron are implicated in several retinal disorders, most notably age-related macular degeneration. This review is an effort to highlight risk factors for excessive levels of systemic iron build-up in the retina and its potential impact on the eye health. Information is integrated across clinical and preclinical animal studies to provide insights into the effects of systemic iron loading on the retina., Competing Interests: The authors declare that this study received funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage grant LP160100126 with funding partners AstraZeneca and Biogen Inc. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication., (Copyright © 2022 Shahandeh, Bui, Finkelstein and Nguyen.)

Purpose: Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), one of the leading causes of childhood blindness, is a complex condition in which various antenatal and neonatal factors participate at different stages of the disease. This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate whether pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) was associated with ROP by summarizing all available evidence., Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, EBSCO and SCOPUS databases were searched for all relevant studies published from inception to April 2020. Studies investigating the association between PIH and ROP were included., Results: A total of 29 studies were finally included for the meta-analysis after study selection. The results showed there are both no significant association between PIH and the occurrence of ROP in case-control studies (OR 0.91, 95%CI 0.59 to 1.40, I 2  = 81%, p = 0.67) and cohort studies (OR 1.32, 95%CI 0.89 to 1.98, I 2  = 93%, p = 0.17). The conclusion was same between pre-eclampsia and ROP (OR 0.82, 95%CI: 0.50 to 1.35, I 2  = 83%, p = 0.43 in case-control studies and OR 1.70, 95%CI: 0.82 to 3.50, I 2  = 95%, p = 0.15 in cohort studies)., Conclusion: In summary, this meta-analysis did not reveal a consistent result, the conclusion remains inconclusive, and further studies will be needed to come to a conclusion for the effect of maternal PIH on ROP and foster a better understanding of the prevention of ROP., (© 2021 Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica Foundation. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Purpose: To report a case of a patient with subretinal fluid (SRF) associated with choroidal nevus (CN), who was treated with selective retina therapy (SRT) and ultimately achieved resolution of the SRF., Observations: A 41-year-old man with SRF associated with CN in his right eye (RE) underwent ophthalmologic evaluation, including optic coherence tomography, fluorescein angiography (FA) and indocyanine green angiography. The best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) converted to the logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) was 0.00 in the RE. SRT (532 nm, 1.7 μs pulse duration, 30 pulses in 100Hz; Medical Laser Center Lübeck) was performed with the laser spots equally distributed across the FA leakage area. Until 20 months SRT was repeated several times because the SRF decreased every time in response to SRT, but was not completely resolved and sometimes increased with time. After performing 6 times of SRT session, leakage on FA stopped at 21 months follow-up and SRF was resolved at 31 months. At 60 months after the first SRT, there were no signs of malignant transformation, no SRF, and the BCVA in the RE was 0.22., Conclusions and Importance: SRT seems to be a useful treatment and proper clinical studies are necessary to establish the best treatment protocol for SRF associated with CN., Competing Interests: The following authors have no financial disclosures: (MY, YM, AK,KH,TK, DTK, RB, SH)., (© 2020 The Authors.)

Purpose: This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate whether usage of corticosteroids was associated with an increased risk of central serous chorioretinopathy by summarizing all available evidence., Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science databases were searched for all relevant studies published from inception to April 2019. Studies investigating the association between corticosteroids and the risk of central serous chorioretinopathy were included., Results: Six case-control studies were finally included for the meta-analysis after study selection. The results of the analysis showed that there was a significantly higher risk of central serous chorioretinopathy among patients who once used corticosteroids (N = 707) compared with individuals without the usage of corticosteroids (N = 1927) (OR 4.050, 95% CI 2.270 to 7.220, I 2  = 59%, P < 0.001). Results were the same for taking corticosteroids orally (OR 1.650, 95% CI 1.510 to 1.810, I 2  = 47%, P < 0.001), through injection (OR 1.660, 95% CI 1.440 to 1.910, I 2  = 0%, P < 0.001), and through nasal spray (OR 1.910, 95% CI 1.500 to 2.420, I 2  = 17%, P < 0.001), but not for inhaled usage (OR 1.340, 95% CI 0.900 to 1.990, I 2  = 0%, P = 0.160)., Conclusions: In conclusion, this meta-analysis demonstrated that patients with the usage of corticosteroids had an increased risk of central serous chorioretinopathy. Patients who were prescribed with corticosteroids need greater attention to their retina health. Also, all central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) patients should avoid the use of corticosteroids as much as they possibly can.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules, with their role in gene silencing and translational repression by binding to target mRNAs. Since it was discovered in 1993, miRNA are found in all eukaryotic cells conserved across the species. In recent years, regulation of miRNAs are extensively studied for their role in biological processes as well as in development and progression of various human diseases including retinal disorder, neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular disease and cancer. This chapter summarises miRNA biogenesis and explores their potential roles in a variety of diseases. miRNAs holds huge potential for diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, and as predictors of drug response.