Glaucoma is a group of optic nerve diseases characterized by progressive and irreversible degeneration of retinal ganglion cells and their axons. There are different opinions on the pathogenesis of glaucoma, which further reflects that the mechanism of glaucoma optic nerve injury is still in the exploratory stage, and there is still a long way to go to develop effective drugs to prevent or reverse the visual function damage in patients with glaucoma. Therefore, on the basis of previous studies, our research group explored and expanded whether there were similar pathological changes in patients with clinical glaucoma not only in aqueous humor, but also in blood and tear samples, and further studied the mechanism. Three kinds of samples (aqueous humor, blood and tears) were collected from patients with primary glaucoma and age-related cataract treated in Sun Yat-sen Eye Center of Sun Yat-sen University. Normal people with matched age and sex were recruited as normal control group (normal control group only collected blood and tear samples). Three methods of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (FI-ICP-MS), metabonomics and genomics were used to study the concentration changes of patients with primary glaucoma in three kinds of body fluid samples, and the related factors were analyzed combined with clinical data, so as to provide a new theoretical basis for studying the pathogenic mechanism and new prevention pathway of primary glaucoma.
Trace elements are one of the indispensable substances in human body and play an important physiological role. Zinc is a trace element second only to iron in organisms, which is widely distributed in various systems and organs and plays an important biological role, and interacts with other trace elements such as copper and iron. With the improvement of detection methods, it is possible to detect the concentration of zinc and other trace elements in liquid samples. It is reported in the existing literature that there are significant changes in the concentration of trace elements in a variety of eye diseases. Our group intends to collect three kinds of samples (aqueous humor, blood and tears) of patients with primary glaucoma and age-related cataract who were treated in Sun Yat-sen Eye Center of Sun Yat-sen University from March 2020 to March 2021. Normal people with matched age and sex were recruited as normal control group (normal control group only collected blood and tear samples). Three methods (FI-ICP-MS, metabonomics and genomics) were used to study the concentration changes of patients with primary glaucoma in three kinds of body fluid samples, and the related factors were analyzed combined with clinical data, so as to provide a theoretical basis for studying the pathogenic mechanism and new prevention pathway of primary glaucoma.