PLoS ONE (Jan 2018)

Impaired retinal microcirculation in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

  • Hong Jiang,
  • Yi Liu,
  • Yantao Wei,
  • Yingying Shi,
  • Clinton B Wright,
  • Xiaoyan Sun,
  • Tatjana Rundek,
  • Bernard S Baumel,
  • Jonathan Landman,
  • Jianhua Wang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192154
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 2
p. e0192154

Abstract

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The goal of this study was to determine the retinal blood flow rate (BFR) and blood flow velocity (BFV) of pre-capillary arterioles and post-capillary venules in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Forty patients (20 AD and 20 MCI) and 21 cognitively normal (CN) controls with a similar age range (± 5 yrs) were recruited. A retinal function imager (RFI) was used to measure BFRs and BFVs of arterioles and venules in the macular region. The thickness of the ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) was measured using Zeiss Cirrus optical coherence tomography. Macular BFRs in AD group were 2.64 ± 0.20 nl/s (mean ± standard deviation) in arterioles and 2.23 ± 0.19 nl/s in venules, which were significantly lower than in MCI and CN groups (P 0.05). The lower BFR in both arterioles and venules in AD and MCI patients together with the loss of GCIPL were evident, indicating the impairment of the two components in the neurovascular-hemodynamic system, which may play a role in disease progression.