Publications by authors named "Zizhong Hu"

Purpose: To propose an ultrathin biological amniotic membrane (btAM) thinner than 10 μm as the graft to treat highly myopic macular holes (MH).

Methods: This pilot study included 14 patients affected by refractory macular holes associated with high myopia. btAM was used as a bandage covering the holes.

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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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Article Synopsis
  • Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a common complication of diabetes that can lead to vision loss, and this study investigates the role of exosomal lncRNA in its development.
  • Researchers found that lncRNA-MIAT, which is abundant in exosomes from patients with advanced DR, promotes blood vessel formation in retinal cells under high glucose conditions.
  • The study highlights a specific molecular pathway involving lncRNA-MIAT that could be targeted for new treatments for DR, suggesting its potential as a clinical target to combat retinal damage in diabetic patients.
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  • The study investigates the role of exosomal miRNAs from retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells under oxidative stress, aiming to understand their function in retinal degeneration.
  • Researchers exposed RPE cells to oxidative stress, leading to increased inflammatory markers and oxidative damage, followed by the isolation and injection of RPE-derived exosomes into mice.
  • Analysis of the exosomal miRNAs revealed specific downregulated and upregulated miRs, with further investigations suggesting these miRs may play a role in understanding age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
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  • The lens of the eye contains living epithelial cells (LECs), which produce exosomes (LEC-exos) whose function is not well understood.
  • In a study, researchers found that LEC-exos have anti-angiogenic properties, reducing abnormal blood vessel growth in the retina and choroid of experimental models.
  • The study showed that LEC-exos limit microglial activation and migration, leading to a decreased pro-angiogenic effect on other cells, suggesting potential therapeutic implications for controlling ocular neovascularization.
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Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a vision-threatening diabetic complication that is characterized by microvasculature impairment and immune dysfunction. The present study demonstrated that M2 microglia intensively participated in retinal microangiopathy in human diabetic proliferative membranes, mice retinas, retinas of mice with oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) mice, and retinas of streptozotocin-induced DR mice. Further in vivo and in vitro experiments showed that exosomes derived from M2 polarized microglia (M2-exo) could reduce pericyte apoptosis and promote endothelial cell proliferation, thereby promoting vascular remodeling and reducing vascular leakage from the diabetic retina.

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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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Objective: This study aimed to evaluate conjunctival vessels in patients with dry eye disease (DED) using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).

Methods: This was a cross-sectional, observational clinical study. Twenty-three eyes of 18 patients with DED and 28 eyes of 23 healthy controls were included for examination in this study.

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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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Background And Objective: Fundus fluorescein angiography (FFA) is widely used in clinical ophthalmic diagnosis and treatment with the requirement of adverse fluorescent dyes injection. Recently, many deep Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)-based methods have been proposed to estimate FFA from color fundus (CF) images to eliminate the use of adverse fluorescent dyes. However, the robustness of these methods is affected by pathological changes.

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Objectives: The relationship between renal function and diabetic retinopathy has been controversial. This study is to investigate the influence of renal function on the complex and surgical outcomes of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR).

Methods: This was a analysis of the CONCEPT clinical trial.

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Purpose: To develop artificial intelligence (AI)-based deep learning (DL) models for automatically detecting the ischemia type and the non-perfusion area (NPA) from color fundus photographs (CFPs) of patients with branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO).

Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of 274 CFPs from patients diagnosed with BRVO. All DL models were trained using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) based on 45 degree CFPs covering the fovea and the optic disk.

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An acoustic coupling scheme largely determines the performance of optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM), including practicability, sensitivity, and stability. In this study, we propose OR-PAM based on a local-flexible acoustic coupling scheme, which includes a well-designed combiner connecting a set of circulating systems. The combiner integrates an objective lens and an ultrasonic transducer, controls the water level, restricts the flow rate, and drains bubbles.

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Purpose: To investigate the influence of preoperative adjunctive anti-VEGF drug (Conbercept) on vitreous inflammatory cytokines and chemokines profiles and whether those cytokines were associated with early macular edema (ME) after surgery for patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR).

Methods: In this analysis of the CONCEPT clinical trial, subjects with PDR underwent vitrectomy were included and vitreous samples were collected at the start of vitrectomy. Levels of vitreous VEGF, 17 inflammatory cytokines, and 11 chemokines were measured using Luminex multiplex technology.

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Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of vitrectomy with inverted fovea-sparing internal limiting membrane, as a modified surgical technique in the treatment of the eyes with myopic foveoschisis.

Methods: This study was based on a consecutive, interventional case series. A standard 25-gauge (25-G), 3-port pars plana vitrectomy combined with inverted fovea-sparing internal limiting membrane was performed on 13 eyes.

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Vitreous fibrovascular membranes (FVMs), the hallmark of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), cause retinal hemorrhage, detachment, and eventually blindness. However, little is known about the pathophysiology of FVM. In this study, we used single-cell RNA sequencing on surgically harvested PDR-FVMs and generated a comprehensive cell atlas of FVM.

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Diabetic retinopathy is a heterogeneous retinal degenerative disease with the microvascular dysfunction being recognized as a hallmark of the advanced stage. In this study, we demonstrated that exosomes collected from the vitreous humor of proliferative diabetic retinopathy patients promoted proliferation, migration and tube formation ability of primary human retinal endothelial cells via its elevated miR-9-3p expression level. Müller glia cells were further recognized as the sole source of the aberrantly expressed miR-9-3p, and both and experiments validated that Müller glia-derived exosomes aggravate vascular dysfunction under high glucose.

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Aim: To explore retinal displacement after surgical treatment for idiopathic macular hole (IMH) with different internal limiting membrane (ILM) peeling patterns.

Methods: Totally 22 eyes from 20 patients with IMH were randomly allocated into two groups, N-T group (11 eyes) and T-N group (11 eyes). For patients in N-T group, ILM was peeled off from nasal to temporal retina.

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Background: Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), as one of the main microvascular complications of diabetes mellitus, seriously threatens the visual function of the working-age population; yet, the underlying pathogenesis is still poorly understood. This study aimed to identify the distinct exosomal circular RNA (circRNA) expression in PDR serum and preliminarily explore the potential pro-angiogenic mechanism of specific exosomal circRNAs.

Methods: We collected serum samples from 10 patients with PDR and 10 patients with age-matched senile cataract to detect the exosomal differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of circRNAs high-throughput sequencing, followed by validation with quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR).

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Objectives: Idiopathic epiretinal membrane (iERM) or idiopathic macular hole (iMH) is frequently used as a "healthy" control in comparison of vitreous cytokines with other vitreoretinal diseases. This study aimed to investigate if there is a difference in vitreal cytokines expression between patients with iERM and iMH.

Methods: In this prospective study, all subjects received standard pars plana vitrectomy surgery, and 0.

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Purpose: To monitor the intraocular proangiogenic and profibrotic cytokine profiles within 7 days after intravitreous injection of conbercept (IVC) for patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR).

Methods: This prospective, randomized controlled, consecutive, comparative study included 157 eyes with PDR. Participant eyes underwent sham IVC or IVC and subsequent vitrectomy at days 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 postinjection.

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Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of rectangular 3-snip punctoplasty versus punch punctoplasty Kelly punch with silicone intubation for the management of acquired external punctal stenosis (AEPS).

Methods: A prospective, randomized, comparative study was performed on 123 eyes of 94 patients with AEPS. Patients were recruited into either group of rectangular 3-snip punctoplasty (group A) or group of punch punctoplasty with silicone intubation (group B).

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Retinal diseases, the leading causes of vison loss and blindness, are associated with complicated pathogeneses such as angiogenesis, inflammation, immune regulation, fibrous proliferation, and neurodegeneration. The retina is a complex tissue, where the various resident cell types communicate between themselves and with cells from the blood and immune systems. Exosomes, which are bilayer membrane vesicles with diameters of 30-150 nm, carry a variety of proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, and participate in cell-to-cell communication.

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