Research says glaucoma is an autoimmune disease

Research says glaucoma is an autoimmune disease

August 14, 2018 Source: Science and Technology Daily

Glaucoma is a blinding neurodegenerative disease that is common and mysterious and has a complex cause. Most people think that increased intraocular pressure is the most important cause of glaucoma, but a research paper published on the website of Nature News magazine said that glaucoma is actually an autoimmune disease, and the patient's own T cell is Causes glaucoma optic nerve degeneration.

Since elevated intraocular pressure is considered to be the most important risk factor for glaucoma, most treatments for glaucoma focus on the goal of reducing intraocular pressure. However, many patients will still get worse after the intraocular pressure returns to normal. Therefore, there is a hypothesis that glaucoma may be caused by elevated intraocular pressure or secondary immune response. But the hypothesis has not been confirmed.

To test this hypothesis, a research team consisting of researchers from China, the United States, and the Netherlands conducted a mouse model study. In their paper, they said that T cells were found in the retina of glaucoma mice. This is unusual because T cells are usually inaccessible to the retina, which is blocked by the blood-retinal barrier outside the retina. Further studies have shown that elevated intraocular pressure causes T cell infiltration, which infiltrates into the retina and targets heat shock proteins, which in turn causes glaucomatous optic nerve degeneration.

Typically, T cells do not target proteins produced by the host, and the team suspects that these T cells are exposed to bacterial heat shock proteins prior to infiltration into the retina, and thus cross-reactivity occurs. Follow-up studies have also confirmed that in the absence of commensal flora, mice do not develop T cell responses or related neurodegeneration leading to glaucoma. These are sufficient to show that the glaucomatous optic nerve degeneration is mediated by T cells pre-sensitized by contact with the commensal flora.

Subsequent to the study of human glaucoma patients, the team found that the levels of heat shock protein-specific T cells in the retina of these patients were abnormally high, five times normal. This further indicates that T cells are the cause of glaucomatous optic nerve degeneration, which is actually an autoimmune disease.

The researchers point out that the new study suggests that glaucoma is an autoimmune disease that may change the diagnostic, prophylactic, and therapeutic paradigm of glaucoma, and blocking related immune activity may be the primary means of glaucoma treatment in the future. (Liu Haiying)

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