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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Mar 15, 2015; 6(2): 312-320
Published online Mar 15, 2015. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v6.i2.312
Published online Mar 15, 2015. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v6.i2.312
Current knowledge on diabetic retinopathy from human donor tissues
Jessica H Eisma, Jennifer E Dulle, Patrice E Fort, Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Kellogg Eye Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, United States
Author contributions: Eisma JH wrote the first draft of the paper; Dulle JE and Fort PE edited, corrected and formatted the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: Patrice E Fort has received research funding from the National Eye Institute (NIH-NEI); Patrice E Fort is an employee the University of Michigan; none of the authors have any conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Patrice E Fort, PhD, Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Kellogg Eye Center, University of Michigan, 1000 Wall Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, United States. patricef@umich.edu
Telephone: +1-734-2328225 Fax: +1-734-2328030
Received: September 17, 2014
Peer-review started: September 20, 2014
First decision: December 17, 2014
Revised: December 23, 2014
Accepted: December 29, 2014
Article in press: December 31, 2014
Published online: March 15, 2015
Peer-review started: September 20, 2014
First decision: December 17, 2014
Revised: December 23, 2014
Accepted: December 29, 2014
Article in press: December 31, 2014
Published online: March 15, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: This review summarizes the current state of the knowledge on the physiopathology of diabetic retinopathy directly obtained from the analysis of tissues from human patients strongly complementing what has been gathered from animal models. The review discusses the vascular, inflammatory and neurodegenerative aspects of the disease, their inter-relation and the advantages and limits of such studies compared to the ones using animal models. Altogether, these analyses clearly demonstrate the complexity of the disease mechanisms but also the somewhat still limited knowledge and the need for additional complementary studies.