gms | German Medical Science

22nd Annual Meeting of the German Retina Society

German Retina Society

26.06. - 27.06.2009, Berlin

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PuriProtect® – a new neuroprotective irrigation solution for vitrectomy?

Meeting Abstract

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  • Maximilian Schultheiss - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen
  • H. Ruschenburg - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen
  • M. S. Spitzer - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen
  • K. Januschowski - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen
  • M. Warga - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen
  • K. U. Bartz-Schmidt - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen
  • P. Szurman - University Eye Clinic of Tuebingen

German Retina Society. 22nd Annual Meeting of the German Retina Society. Berlin, 26.-27.06.2009. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2009. DocRG2009-36

doi: 10.3205/09rg37, urn:nbn:de:0183-09rg378

This is the English version of the article.
The German version can be found at: http://www.egms.de/de/meetings/rg2009/09rg37.shtml

Published: June 29, 2009

© 2009 Schultheiss et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

Text

Objective: Retinal damage can be induced iatrogenically during vitreoretinal surgery. Risk factors are light-toxicity by endoillumination, chemical-toxicity by the irrigation-solution and mechanical damage by intraoperative alterations of the retina. PuriProtect® is a new irrigation solution, which will be introduced to the market this year. Its composition is basically the same like Balanced Salt Solution (BSS®, Alcon) except that of 3mM taurine is added. Up to now no investigations have been performed whether PuriProtect® in comparison to BSS® is neuroprotective or not.

Methods: We investigated the effect of BSS® and PruriProtect® on the function and survival of retinal ganglion cells (RGC-5) in cell-culture (incubation for 2h with the irrigation solutions) and in whole-mount-preparations of bovine eyes (incubation for 3h with the irrigation solutions). For additional stress induction 12mM (cell-culture) or 250µM glutamate (whole-mount) was added during the incubation. To evaluate mitochondrial function and survival of RGCs MTT-test and Live/Dead staining was used.

Results: Without the addition of glutamate there was no difference in mitochondrial activity of RGC-5 cells when irrigated with BSS® or PuriProtect®. However, after induction of additional stress with 12mM glutamate a highly significant difference in mitochondrial activity was observed. In the whole-mount-preparations Puriprotect® showed a significant protective effect without and with the addition of 250µM glutamate.

Conclusions: PuriProtect® irrigation solution has neuroprotective properties, especially in blocking glutamate induced excitotoxicity. Elevated glutamate-level can be encountered during hypoxia, in retinal detachment, during endoillumination or other conditions. Therefore PuriProtect® may prevent iatrogenically induced death of retinal ganglion cells during vitrectomy.