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Clay minerals have been applied in biomedicine for thousands of years. Laponite is a nanostructured synthetic clay with the capacity to retain and progressively release drugs. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Laponite application in various biomedical areas. This is the first paper to review the potential biomedical applications of Laponite in ophthalmology. The introduction briefly covers the physical, chemical, rheological, and biocompatibility features of different routes of administration. After that, emphasis is placed on 1) drug delivery for antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, growth factors, other proteins, and cancer treatment; 2) bleeding prevention or treatment; and 3) tissue engineering through regenerative medicine using scaffolds in intraocular and extraocular tissue. Although most scientific research is not performed on the eye, both the findings and the new treatments resulting from that research are potentially applicable in ophthalmology since many of the drugs used are the same, the tissue evaluated in vitro or in vivo is also present in the eye, and the pathologies treated also occur in the eye. Finally, future prospects for this emerging field are discussed.

Introduction: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia affecting the central nervous system, and alteration of several visual structures has been reported. Structural retinal changes are usually accompanied by changes in visual function in this disease. The aim of this study was to analyse the differences in visual function at different stages of the pathology (family history group (FH+), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), mild AD and moderate AD) in comparison with a control group of subjects with no cognitive decline and no family history of AD. Methods: We included 53 controls, 13 subjects with FH+, 23 patients with MCI, 25 patients with mild AD and, 21 patients with moderate AD. All were ophthalmologically healthy. Visual acuity (VA), contrast sensitivity (CS), colour perception, visual integration, and fundus examination were performed. Results: The analysis showed a statistically significant decrease in VA, CS and visual integration score between the MCI, mild AD and moderate AD groups compared to the control group. In the CS higher frequencies and in the colour perception test (total errors number), statistically significant differences were also observed in the MCI, mild AD and moderate AD groups with respect to the FH+ group and also between the control and AD groups. The FH+ group showed no statistically significant difference in visual functions compared to the control group. All the test correlated with the Mini Mental State Examination score and showed good predictive value when memory decline was present, with better values when AD was at a more advanced stage. Conclusion: Alterations in visual function appear in subjects with MCI and evolve when AD is established, being stable in the initial stages of the disease (mild AD and moderate AD). Therefore, visual psychophysical tests are a useful, simple and complementary tool to neuropsychological tests to facilitate diagnosis in the preclinical and early stages of AD., Research Network RETIBRAIN, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiviness, NEUROCENTRO. IL-C, Complutense University of Madrid, Depto. de Inmunología, Oftalmología y ORL, Fac. de Óptica y Optometría, TRUE, pub

Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease of the retina characterized by the irreversible loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) leading to visual loss. Degeneration of RGCs and loss of their axons, as well as damage and remodeling of the lamina cribrosa are the main events in the pathogenesis of glaucoma. Different molecular pathways are involved in RGC death, which are triggered and exacerbated as a consequence of a number of risk factors such as elevated intraocular pressure (IOP), age, ocular biomechanics, or low ocular perfusion pressure. Increased IOP is one of the most important risk factors associated with this pathology and the only one for which treatment is currently available, nevertheless, on many cases the progression of the disease continues, despite IOP control. Thus, the IOP elevation is not the only trigger of glaucomatous damage, showing the evidence that other factors can induce RGCs death in this pathology, would be involved in the advance of glaucomatous neurodegeneration. The underlying mechanisms driving the neurodegenerative process in glaucoma include ischemia/hypoxia, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. In glaucoma, like as other neurodegenerative disorders, the immune system is involved and immunoregulation is conducted mainly by glial cells, microglia, astrocytes, and Müller cells. The increase in IOP produces the activation of glial cells in the retinal tissue. Chronic activation of glial cells in glaucoma may provoke a proinflammatory state at the retinal level inducing blood retinal barrier disruption and RGCs death. The modulation of the immune response in glaucoma as well as the activation of glial cells constitute an interesting new approach in the treatment of glaucoma., Santander-Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Depto. de Inmunología, Oftalmología y ORL, Fac. de Óptica y Optometría, Instituto de Investigaciones Oftalmológicas Ramón Castroviejo, Fac. de Medicina, TRUE, pub

Copyright © 2015 Elena Salobrar-Garcia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., Purpose. To analyze in mild Alzheimer's disease (MAD) patients, GDS-4 (Reisberg Scale), whether or not some psychophysical tests (PTs) support OCT macular findings in the same group of MAD patients reported previously. Methods. Twenty-three MAD patients and 28 age-matched control subjects with mean Mini Mental State Examination of 23.3 and 28.2, respectively, with no ocular disease or systemic disorders affecting vision were included. Best-corrected visual acuity (VA), contrast sensitivity (CS) (3, 6, 12, and 18 cpds), color perception (CP), and perception digital test (PDT) were tested in one eye of each patient. Results. In comparison with the controls, MAD patients presented (i) a significant decrease in VA, PDT, and CS for all spatial frequencies analyzed, especially the higher ones, and (ii) a significant increase in unspecific errors on the blue axis (P < 0.05 in all instances). In MAD patients, a wide a ROC curve was plotted in all PTs. Conclusions. In MAD, CS, VA, and the tritan axis in CP were impaired. The PTs with the greatest predictive value are the higher spatial frequencies in CS and tritan unspecific errors in CP. PT abnormalities are consistent with the structural findings reported in the same MAD patients using OCT., Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN), Ministerio de España de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, RETICs prevención, detección precoz y tratamiento de la patología ocular prevalente degenerativa y crónica (OFTARED) (Ministerio de España de Ciencia e Innovación), Unidad Docente de Inmunología, Oftalmología y ORL, Fac. de Óptica y Optometría, TRUE, pub

Although several postmortem findings in the retina of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are available, new biomarkers for early diagnosis and follow-up of AD are still lacking. It has been postulated that the defects in the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) may be the earliest sign of AD, even before damage to the hippocampal region that affects memory. This fact may reflect retinal neuronal-ganglion cell death and axonal loss in the optic nerve in addition to aging., Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN), Redes temáticas de investigación cooperativa en salud (RETICs), Unidad Docente de Inmunología, Oftalmología y ORL, Fac. de Óptica y Optometría, TRUE, pub

En Open Access en la web del editor. Submission: Mar 17, 2015 Acceptance: Aug 22, 2015 Publication Dec 31, 2015, The purpose of this paper is to conduct a review of studies on cystoid macular edema published in the last seven years. Cystoid macular edema is a major cause of loss of visual acuity. It is the final common pathway of many diseases and can be caused by numerous processes including inflammatory, vascular, adverse drug reactions, retinal dystrophy or intraocular tumors. These processes disrupt the blood-retinal barrier, with fluid extravasation to the macular parenchyma. Imaging tests are essential for both detection and monitoring of this pathology. Fluorescein angiography and autofluorescence show the leakage of liquid from perifoveal vessels into the tissue where it forms cystic spaces. Optical coherence tomography is currently the gold standard technique for diagnosis and monitoring. This allows objective measurement of retinal thickness, which correlates with visual acuity and provides more complete morphological information. Based on the underlying etiology, the therapeutic approach can be either surgical or medical with anti-inflammatory drugs. We found that disruption of the blood-retinal barrier for various reasons is the key point in the pathogenesis of cystoid macular edema, therefore we believe that studies on its treatment should proceed on this path., Unidad Docente de Inmunología, Oftalmología y ORL, Fac. de Óptica y Optometría, TRUE, pub

Rootstock micropropagation has been extensively used as an alternative to propagation by cuttings. Although studies have recently been conducted on other species, no conclusive reports have been published on the effect of rootstock micropropagation on the field performance of fruit trees. Here, we present the results of a five-year study of peach varieties grafted on two rootstocks (Adesoto 101 and Adafuel), either micropropagated or propagated by cuttings, to ascertain the effect of the rootstock propagation method on field performance. Fruit trees are woody plants with a long life cycle; so, to reduce the influence of environmental or cultural factors on the agronomical results, studies need to last for several years, in which data are obtained from the same individuals over time (longitudinal data). This hinders the analysis because these data lack independence. In contrast with a more traditional approach with data aggregation and repeated-measures ANOVA analysis, in this study, we used linear mixed-effects models to control the variance associated with random factors without data aggregation. The growth of the fruit trees did not appreciably differ between the rootstock propagation methods, neither in the flowering period nor in the yield. The models constructed for different parameters of the field performance (trunk cross-sectional area (TCSA), cumulative yield, cumulative yield efficiency, and cumulative crop load) showed a very good fit (R2 > 0.97), allowing the conclusion that the rootstock propagation method did not affect the field performance of fruit trees in this study.