Abstract #1153

The Effects of Genetic Risk Factors for Glaucoma on the Visual Pathway using Diffusion Tensor MRI

Max K. Colbert¹, Yolandi Van der Merwe², Leon C. Ho², Xiaoling Yang², Gillian McLellan^3,4, Samual A. Hurley⁵, John H. Fingert⁶, Carlos Parra¹, Muneeb A. Faiq¹, Gadi Wollstein¹, Joel S. Schuman¹, and Kevin C. Chan^1,7

¹Department of Ophthalmology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ²Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States, ³Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴McPherson Eye Research Institute, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁶Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA, United States, ⁷Department of Radiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide. To date, the cause of the disease is still unknown, yet a number of candidate genes for glaucoma have been recently identified. In this study, we evaluated the effects of some of these genetic risk factors on the visual pathway using diffusion tensor MRI in experimental animal models. We found that LTBP2 mutants in cats and DBA/2J mice had decreased fractional anisotropy and increased radial diffusivity in the visual pathway. DBA/2J mice also exhibited reduced axial diffusivity, whereas TBK1-transgenic mice did not show detectable DTI changes along the visual pathway.

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