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Review
. 2025 May 7:19:1515-1530.
doi: 10.2147/OPTH.S519292. eCollection 2025.

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP): An Overview of Biomarkers in Various Samples for Prediction, Diagnosis, and Prognosis

Dan Huang  1 , ZhuoQi Liu  2 , Yan Deng  1   3
Affiliations
Review

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP): An Overview of Biomarkers in Various Samples for Prediction, Diagnosis, and Prognosis

Dan Huang et al. Clin Ophthalmol. .

Abstract

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) is a proliferative retinal vascular disease marked by abnormal development of retinal vessels in low birth weight preterm infants. It is one of the leading causes of blindness in preterm infants. Current ROP screening methods impose high demands on both the equipment and the expertise of ophthalmologists, which limits their widespread application, particularly in secondary hospitals and remote areas. Thus, the identification of relevant biomarkers and the development of simpler detection methods are important and promising. Non-invasive or minimally invasive sampling methods, along with biomarkers possessing high sensitivity and specificity, could greatly enhance neonatal screening, facilitate early diagnosis, and improve prevention of blindness in preterm infants. This review provides relevant medical insights for clinical practice. This review explored, compares and analyzes various sampling sources. It compares and analyzes research on ROP-related biomarkers derived from these samples.

Keywords: biomarkers; early diagnosis; neonatal screening; retinopathy of prematurity.

Plain language summary

This review compares different human fluid sampling sources for screening, predicting, diagnosing, and prognosticating ROP patients, and compares and analyzes the research on ROP-related biomarkers from different samples. Non-invasive or minimally invasive methods of obtaining samples and selecting biomarkers with high validity promise to be more beneficial for newborn, early diagnosis of ROP, and better prevention of blindness in preterm infants, providing relevant medical references for clinical practice.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Different detection methods of ROP, including peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, placenta, vitreous humor, aqueous humor, urine and tear fluid.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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