Retinal Vascular Permeability in Diabetic Subjects without Retinopathy Compared with Mild Diabetic Retinopathy and Healthy Controls.

Objective: To investigate retinal vascular permeability mapping as a potential biomarker for diabetic retinopathy in subjects with diabetes with no signs of retinopathy and with mild nonproliferative retinopathy.

Design: This is a case-control study.

Subjects: Participants included 7 healthy controls, 22 subjects with diabetes mellitus and no clinical signs of retinopathy (DMnoDR), and 7 subjects with mild nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR).

Activation of limbal epithelial proliferation is partly controlled by the ACE2-LCN2 pathway.

In response to corneal injury, an activation of corneal epithelial stem cells and their direct progeny the early transit amplifying (eTA) cells to rapidly proliferate is critical for proper re-epithelialization. Thus, it is important to understand how such stem/eTA cell activation is regulated. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is predominantly expressed in the stem/eTA-enriched limbal epithelium but its role in the limbal epithelium was unclear.

Validation of a small cough detector.

Research Question: The assessment of cough frequency in clinical practice relies predominantly on the patient's history. Currently, objective evaluation of cough is feasible with bulky equipment during a brief time ( hours up to 1 day). Thus, monitoring of cough has been rarely performed outside clinical studies.

Optimizing the protocol for retinal vascular permeability mapping from fluorescein videoangiography data.

An intact blood-retinal barrier is critical to maintaining the function of the retina. Many diseases of the eye have been directly associated with impairment in vascular permeability, and methods to measure vascular permeability could offer a window into early detection of disease; however, there exist no direct measures of vascular permeability that have be translated to the clinic. This work details a complete clinical workflow to quantify vascular permeability and volumetric blood flow from fluorescein videoangiography data, with validation through realistic simulations.