Potential of melatonin for prevention of age-related macular degeneration: Experimental study

Decline of the content of melatonin with age is considered to be one of the leading mechanisms of aging and related diseases, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which becomes the main reason for the reduction and loss of vision in elderly individuals. As a rule, the prospects of the u...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advances in gerontology 2013-10, Vol.3 (4), p.302-308
Main Authors: Stefanova, N. A., Zhdankina, A. A., Fursova, A. Zh, Kolosova, N. G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Geriatrics/Gerontology
Macular degeneration
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Melatonin
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Summary:Decline of the content of melatonin with age is considered to be one of the leading mechanisms of aging and related diseases, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which becomes the main reason for the reduction and loss of vision in elderly individuals. As a rule, the prospects of the use of melatonin in the prevention of AMD are being actively discussed on the basis of experiments with cells of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). There are no convincing evidence of its effectiveness in the prophylaxis and/or the treatment of AMD. We showed previously that the senescence-accelerated OXYS rats are an adequate animal model of AMD, which is already actively used to assess the efficacy of therapeutic interventions in the course of the disease. Here, we studied the effect of melatonin (Melaksen) on the development of retinopathy similar to AMD in OXYS rats in a dose of 0.04 mg/kg, which is equivalent to that recommended for people. According to ophthalmoscopic examinations, melatonin did not prevent but significantly slowed the development of clinical manifestations of retinopathy in OXYS rats and reduced the severity of pathological changes in the retina. A light-microscopic study showed that melatonin prevented the structural and functional changes in the RPE cells and reduced the severity of microcirculatory disorders in the choroid, which, as assumed, prevented destruction of neurosensory cells and associative and ganglion neurons in the retina. Overall, the results suggest the prospects of the application of melatonin in the prevention of AMD in humans.
ISSN:2079-0570
2079-0589
DOI:10.1134/S2079057013040073