Combination of hypertension and diabetes causes rapid retinal cell death

The combination of diabetes and hypertension-potentiated retinal oxidative and inflammatory stress accelerates retinal cell death and acellular capillary formation, reveals a paper in Molecular Vision.

A team led by Dr A.B. El-Remessy, Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia, USA, compared spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) to the outcomes of SHR with streptozotocin-induced diabetes (SHR+D). All rats were followed for 6 or 10 weeks, with Wistar rats were used as controls.

After six week both hypertension alone and hypertension with diabetes induced a quicker retinal cell death, compared to the control rats. The increase was linked to increased activation of phosphorylated-Jun N-terminal kinase (pJNK), phosphorylated-Akt inhibition, plasma and retinal lipid peroxides and soluble intracellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) levels.

After 10 weeks there was a similar pattern in retinal nitrotyrosine, nuclear factor kappaB p65, and tumor necrosis factor-α expression being linked to exacerbated pJNK activation and acellular capillaries formation.