gms | German Medical Science

Purpose: To compare the concentration of tumor necrosis factor α (TNF) in the vitreous humour of eyes with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) vs. in eyes with a non-proliferative and non-angiogenic retinal disease, namely idiopathic macular hole. TNF is a pro-inflammatory cytokine produced by macrophages and T-cells playing an important role in both inflammation and apoptosis.

Methods: We measured the concentration of TNF in 39 specimens of vitreous humour obtained from 39 patients undergoing pars plana vitrectomy either for the treatment of a macular hole (22) or for subretinal hemorrhage secondary to neovascular AMD (17), respectively. All eyes were treatment-naive for any intravitreal injection or photodynamic therapy. For the proteomic mapping, we applied a customized antibody-microarray approach. 5 µg protein of each sample were incubated on microarray slides. For detection of bound proteins samples were labeled with a fluorescent dye prior to the incubation and slides were scanned using a confocal microarray scanner subsequent to the incubation. Analysis of experimental data was performed using statistical techniques incl. ANOVA, t-test and Post-hoc testing.

Results: The mean intensity of TNF (5023±3179 SD) in the samples of vitreous humour from patients with neovascular AMD was higher than in samples from patients with idiopathic macular hole (3297±1367; p=0.002).

Conclusion: Our data suggest that TNF α is involved in the pathogenesis of active choroidal neovascularization secondary to AMD. However, there was a wide range in the concentration of TNF in the AMD group.