Publications by authors named "Songtao Yuan"

Aim: To evaluate the relationship between monocyte to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (MHR) and the disease activity of thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO).

Methods: A total of 87 patients were classified into two groups based on clinical activity score (CAS) scoring criteria: high CAS group (=62, the CAS score was ≥3); low CAS group (=25, the CAS score was <3). In addition, a group of healthy people (=114) were included to compared the MHR.

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Metabolic studies at the single cell level can directly define the cellular phenotype closest to physiological or disease states. However, the current single cell metabolome (SCM) study using mass spectroscopy has difficulty giving a complete view of the metabolic activity in the cell, and the prediction of the metabolism-phenotype relationship is limited by the potential inconsistency between transcriptomic and metabolic levels. Here, the single-cell simultaneous metabolome and transcriptome profiling method (scMeT-seq) is developed at one single cell, based on sub-picoliter sampling from the cell for the initial metabolome profiling followed by single cell transcriptome sequencing.

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Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has facilitated a deeper comprehension of the molecular mechanisms behind eye diseases and has prompted the selection of precise therapeutic targets by examining the cellular and molecular intricacies at the single-cell level. This review delineates the pivotal role of scRNA-seq in elucidating the functions of innate immune cells within the context of ocular pathologies. Recent advancements in scRNA-seq have revealed that innate immune cells, both from the periphery and resident in the retina, are actively engaged in various stages of multiple eye diseases.

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Autophagic dysfunction-induced deterioration of the retinal microenvironment drives the progression of wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD). The efficacy of single-target anti-VEGF antibodies in treating wAMD has long been suboptimal due to the intricate interplay between autophagy dysfunction, oxidative stress, and angiogenesis. Here, we introduce an intravitreal hydrogel depot, named Rab&Rapa-M@G, consisting of rapamycin-loaded microemulsion (Rapa-M, an mTOR inhibitor), ranibizumab (anti-VEGF antibody), and a thermosensitive hydrogel matrix.

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The eye is closely connected to the brain, providing a unique window to detect pathological changes in the brain. In this study, we discovered β-amyloid (Aβ) deposits along the ocular glymphatic system in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 5×FAD transgenic mouse model. Interestingly, Aβ from the brain can flow into the eyes along the optic nerve through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), causing retinal degeneration.

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To improve the understanding of potential pathological mechanisms of macular edema (ME), we try to discover biomarker candidates related to ME caused by diabetic retinopathy (DR) and retinal vein occlusion (RVO) in spectral-domain optical coherence tomography images by means of deep learning (DL). 32 eyes of 26 subjects with non-proliferative DR (NPDR), 77 eyes of 61 subjects with proliferative DR (PDR), 120 eyes of 116 subjects with branch RVO (BRVO), and 17 eyes of 15 subjects with central RVO (CRVO) were collected. A DL model was implemented to guide biomarker candidate discovery.

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Article Synopsis
  • The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is essential for maintaining eye health, and its dysfunction can result in severe conditions like age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
  • While there have been advances in treating the neovascular form of AMD, effective therapies for the atrophic form are still lacking due to limited understanding of RPE pathology.
  • This study identified the protein CPXM2 as uniquely expressed in RPE cells affected by atrophic AMD, suggesting it may be linked to oxidative stress and could serve as a potential target for new treatments.
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Eye tracking techniques enable high-efficient, natural, and effortless human-machine interaction by detecting users' eye movements and decoding their attention and intentions. Here, a miniature, imperceptible, and biocompatible smart contact lens is proposed for in situ eye tracking and wireless eye-machine interaction. Employing the frequency encoding strategy, the chip-free and battery-free lens successes in detecting eye movement and closure.

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Accurate retinal layer segmentation on optical coherence tomography (OCT) images is hampered by the challenges of collecting OCT images with diverse pathological characterization and balanced distribution. Current generative models can produce high-realistic images and corresponding labels without quantitative limitations by fitting distributions of real collected data. Nevertheless, the diversity of their generated data is still limited due to the inherent imbalance of training data.

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Silicone oil has emerged as the common option for intraocular tamponade during complicated retina vitrectomy. However, the postoperative elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP), influenced by numerous factors, remains a significant and frequently encountered complication that poses a potential threat to vision. Extensive research has been conducted to investigate the risk factors associated with elevated IOP following silicone oil tamponade, including silicone oil viscosity, preoperative high IOP, diabetes, and lens status.

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Article Synopsis
  • Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a cutting-edge imaging technology used to visualize retinal and microvascular systems, but there's a lack of publicly accessible datasets.
  • The newly introduced OCTA-500 dataset is the largest available, featuring detailed images and annotations from 500 subjects, including various modalities, projections, and segmentation labels for comprehensive analysis.
  • The paper also presents a multi-object segmentation task (CAVF) and introduces an improved segmentation network (IPN-V2), which shows about a 10% improvement in performance, while exploring the effects of various dataset features on segmentation accuracy.
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Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a leading cause of irreversible vision loss in working-age populations. Fat mass and obesity-associated protein (FTO) is an N-methyladenosine (mA) demethylase that demethylates RNAs involved in energy homeostasis, though its influence on DR is not well studied. Herein, we detected elevated FTO expression in vitreous fibrovascular membranes of patients with proliferative DR.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to identify risk factors and improve prediction models for elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) following vitreoretinal surgery using silicone oil.
  • Researchers analyzed data from over 1,000 patients, measuring IOP at various intervals post-surgery and using machine learning methods to predict outcomes based on demographic and clinical factors.
  • Results showed 26.01% of patients experienced elevated IOP, particularly within 1-2 weeks of surgery, with the most effective prediction model (Gradient-Boosted Decision Trees) achieving 79.44% accuracy and identifying key risk factors like age, sex, and pre-existing conditions.
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Ocular angiogenic diseases, such as proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), are often characterized by pathological new vessels and fibrosis formation. Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy, despite of its efficiency to inhibit new vessels, has limitations, including drug resistance and retinal fibrosis. Here, we identified that Gremlin1, a novel angiogenesis and fibrosis inducer, was secreted from Müller glial cells, and its expression increased in the vitreous fluid from patients with PDR.

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Retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) dysfunction and choroidal neovascularization (CNV) are predominant features of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), with an unclear mechanism. Herein, we show that RNA demethylase α-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase alkB homolog 5 (ALKBH5) is up-regulated in AMD. In RPE cells, ALKBH5 overexpression associates with depolarization, oxidative stress, disturbed autophagy, irregular lipid homeostasis, and elevated VEGF-A secretion, which subsequently promotes proliferation, migration, and tube formation of vascular endothelial cells.

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Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) causes irreversible blindness in people aged over 50 worldwide. The dysfunction of the retinal pigment epithelium is the primary cause of atrophic AMD. In the current study, we used the ComBat and Training Distribution Matching method to integrate data obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database.

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Unlabelled: Diabetic retinopathy (DR), one of the most common microangiopathic complications in diabetes, causes severe visual damage among working-age populations. Retinal vascular endothelial cells, the key cell type in DR pathogenesis, are responsible for abnormal retinal angiogenesis in advanced stages of DR. The roles of exosomes in DR have been largely unknown.

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Retinal development is initiated by multipotent retinal progenitor cells, which undergo several rounds of cell divisions and subsequently terminal differentiation. Retinal regeneration is usually considered as the recapitulation of retinal development, which share common mechanisms underlying the cell cycle re-entry of adult retinal stem cells and the differentiation of retinal neurons. However, how proliferative retinal progenitor cells perform a precise transition to postmitotic retinal cell types during the process of development and regeneration remains elusive.

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Large volume of labeled data is a cornerstone for deep learning (DL) based segmentation methods. Medical images require domain experts to annotate, and full segmentation annotations of large volumes of medical data are difficult, if not impossible, to acquire in practice. Compared with full annotations, image-level labels are multiple orders of magnitude faster and easier to obtain.

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Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most frequent ocular neoplasm with a strong metastatic ability. The prognostic value of metastasis-associated genes (MAGs) of UM remains unclear. It is urgent to develop a prognostic score system according to the MAGs of UM.

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(1) : The microstructural alterations of the peripapillary choriocapillaris in high myopes remain elusive. Here, we used optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) to explore factors involved in these alterations. (2) : This cross-sectional control study included 205 young adults' eyes (95 with high myopia and 110 with mild to moderate myopia).

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Background And Objective: Most of the existing disease prediction methods in the field of medical image processing fall into two classes, namely image-to-category predictions and image-to-parameter predictions.Few works have focused on image-to-image predictions. Different from multi-horizon predictions in other fields, ophthalmologists prefer to show more confidence in single-horizon predictions due to the low tolerance of predictive risk.

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Article Synopsis
  • - A new model for studying subretinal edema was developed using a single intraocular injection of DL-alpha-aminoadipic acid (DLAAA), allowing researchers to explore the underlying mechanisms and evaluate potential treatments for retinal conditions.
  • - The study monitored subretinal edema progression in rabbits and mice for up to 4 weeks through various imaging techniques and analyzed key molecular markers related to inflammation and blood-retinal barrier disruption.
  • - Findings revealed that DLAAA-induced subretinal edema is linked to impaired fluid clearance and activation of the p38 MAPK pathway, making this model useful for future mechanistic investigations and drug efficacy testing.
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