Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 May 4;53(5):2482-4.
doi: 10.1167/iovs.12-9483i.

The cell and molecular biology of glaucoma: axonopathy and the brain

David J Calkins  1 , Philip J Horner
Affiliations

The cell and molecular biology of glaucoma: axonopathy and the brain

David J Calkins et al. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Compartmentalized RGC degeneration in glaucoma. The axon of the RGC passes unmyelinated through the astrocyte-rich optic nerve head, an established site of vulnerability exhibiting glaucoma-related stressors such as glial reactivity. A contralateral projection is shown depicting the axon passing through the optic chiasm with terminals targeting the superior colliculus and other more anterior sites. These include the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), and the pretectal nuclei: olivary pretectal (OPT), the nucleus of the optic tract (NOT), and the posterior pretectal (PPT). Degenerative events in glaucomatous axonopathy include failure of axonal transport, both anterograde (red arrow) and later retrograde (green arrow). RGC axon terminals and their synapses degrade later. Later, degeneration in the retina includes loss of excitatory synapses, dendritic pruning, and finally cell body loss (modified from Crish and Calkins).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Leske MC, Heijl A, Hussein M, Bengtsson B, Hyman L, Komaroff E, the Early Manifest Glaucoma Trial Group Factors for glaucoma progression and the effect of treatment: the early manifest glaucoma trial. Arch Ophthalmol. 2003;121(1):48–56. - PubMed
    1. Whitmore AV, Libby RT, John SW. Glaucoma: thinking in new ways: a role for autonomous axonal self-destruction and other compartmentalised processes? Prog Retin Eye Res. 2005;24(6):639–662. - PubMed
    1. Qu J, Wang D, Grosskreutz CL. Mechanisms of retinal ganglion cell injury and defense in glaucoma. Exp Eye Res. 2010;91(1):48–53. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kerrigan-Baumrind LA, Quigley HA, Pease ME, Kerrigan DF, Mitchell RS. Number of ganglion cells in glaucoma eyes compared with threshold visual field tests in the same persons. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2000;41(3):741–748. - PubMed
    1. Buckingham BP, Inman DM, Lambert W, et al. Progressive ganglion cell degeneration precedes neuronal loss in a mouse model of glaucoma. J Neurosci. 2008;28(11):2735–2744. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types