Macular Thickness as a Potential Biomarker of Mild Alzheimer's Disease

García‐Martín, Elena; Rojas, Blanca; Ramírez, Ana I.; Hoz, Rosa de; Salazar, Juan J.; Yubero, Raquel; Gil, Pedro; Triviño, Alberto

doi:10.1016/j.ophtha.2013.12.023

Cited by 82 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…It has been documented in studies, that the first affected area is the macular area in Alzheimer's disease, which is followed by a significant decline in the peripapillary thickness of the retinal nerve fibre layer. The most sensitive area is the superior inner macula (Garcia-Martin et al 2014). In patients with Alzheimer's disease, there is a typical inferior field loss, which corresponds to the superior loss of the retinal nerve fibre layer (Trick et al 1995).…”

Section: Results Of Review Of Systematic Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Can the retina be used to diagnose and plot the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

Mahajan

Votruba

2017

Acta Ophthalmologica

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the most common cause of senile dementia. It impairs the quality of life of a person and their family, posing a serious economic and social threat in developed countries. The fact that the diagnosis can only be definitively made post‐mortem, or when the disease is fairly advanced, presents a serious problem if novel therapeutic interventions are to be devised and used early in the course of the disease. There is therefore a pressing need for more sensitive and specific diagnostic tests with which we can detect AD in the preclinical stage. The tau proteins and beta‐amyloid proteins start to accumulate 20 years before the symptoms begin to manifest. Detecting them in the preclinical stage would be a potential breakthrough in the management of AD. A high degree of clinical suspicion is needed to correlate problems in cognition with the changes in the eye, particularly the retina, pupil and ocular movements, so that the disease can be detected early and managed in the prodromal phase. In this systematic review, we ask the question whether the retina can be used to make a specific and early diagnosis of AD.

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Section: Results Of Review Of Systematic Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Can the retina be used to diagnose and plot the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

Mahajan

Votruba

2017

Acta Ophthalmologica

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“…In addition, invivo studies have shown reduced macular thickness and volume in patients with AD [44,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54].…”

Section: Pathological Changes In the Retina And Optic Nervementioning

confidence: 99%

Alzheimer’s disease: A review of its visual system neuropathology. Optical coherence tomography—a potential role as a study tool in vivo

Cunha

Moura-Coelho

Proença

et al. 2016

Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a prevalent, long-term progressive degenerative disorder with great social impact. It is currently thought that, in addition to neurodegeneration, vascular changes also play a role in the pathophysiology of the disease. Visual symptoms are frequent and are an early clinical manifestation; a number of psychophysiologic changes occur in visual function, including visual field defects, abnormal contrast sensitivity, abnormalities in color vision, depth perception deficits, and motion detection abnormalities. These visual changes were initially believed to be solely due to neurodegeneration in the posterior visual pathway. However, evidence from pathology studies in both animal models of AD and humans has demonstrated that neurodegeneration also takes place in the anterior visual pathway, with involvement of the retinal ganglion cells' (RGCs) dendrites, somata, and axons in the optic nerve. These studies additionally showed that patients with AD have changes in retinal and choroidal microvasculature. Pathology findings have been corroborated in in-vivo assessment of the retina and optic nerve head (ONH), as well as the retinal and choroidal vasculature. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) in particular has shown great utility in the assessment of these changes, and it may become a useful tool for early detection and monitoring disease progression in AD. The authors make a review of the current understanding of retinal and choroidal pathological changes in patients with AD, with particular focus on invivo evidence of retinal and choroidal neurodegenerative and microvascular changes using OCT technology.

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“…These results corroborate the general trend in the related literature, which points out the macular thickness as an early biomarker of AD, being a marker even more powerful than RNFL at the optic nerve level. 16 Moreover, the latest studies support the theory that the macular thickness is reduced due to the loss of thickness in the ganglion cell layer. 17 Unlike the optic nerve, the thickness of the RNFL is small when compared with that of the macula.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Many authors have observed a reduction in the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) of the optical nerve in patients with MCI and AD. 5,[15][16][17] Nevertheless, although the macular thickness is studied for AD and MCI patients, it is usually pushed back into the background.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Macular Thickness in Subjective Memory Complaints and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Non-Invasive Biomarker

Castejón

Dudekova

Gallego

et al. 2016

Neuro-Ophthalmology

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia worldwide, which implies an important socioeconomic problem in developed countries. Efforts to find biomarkers to diagnose AD have been intensified, especially, to detect cognitive impairment in its early stages, also known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Besides, there are individuals referring memory loss that is unnoticeable in the family environment and presenting normal neuropsychological tests. The former patients are included in a clinical picture that has been recently called subjective memory complaints (SMC). To achieve an early diagnosis, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been used to measure macular thickness in patients diagnosed with MCI (supported by neuropsychological tests) and SMC (not based on neuropsychological battery). Statistically significant differences have been found in the macular thickness of the control group (274.96 ± 17.61 µm) and for both MCI (259.48 ± 22.39 µm) and SMC (261.45 ± 24.26 µm) patients. In the near future, OCT could become a reliable biomarker and a useful tool for AD screening as well as for the monitoring of the cognitive impairment associated with AD. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Macular Thickness as a Potential Biomarker of Mild Alzheimer's Disease

Cited by 82 publications

References 4 publications

Can the retina be used to diagnose and plot the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

Can the retina be used to diagnose and plot the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

Alzheimer’s disease: A review of its visual system neuropathology. Optical coherence tomography—a potential role as a study tool in vivo

Macular Thickness in Subjective Memory Complaints and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Non-Invasive Biomarker

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